<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>From the Earth of No Return by Ziracona</title>
<style type="text/css">

body { background-color: #ffffff; }
.CI {
text-align:center;
margin-top:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
padding:0px;
}
.center   {text-align: center;}
.cover    {text-align: center;}
.full     {width: 100%; }
.quarter  {width: 25%; }
.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
.u        {text-decoration: underline;}
.bold     {font-weight: bold;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26548057">From the Earth of No Return</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ziracona/pseuds/Ziracona'>Ziracona</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Dead by Daylight (Video Game)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Emotional Connection, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Minor Body Horror, Psychological Trauma, Trauma, Vomit, heavy use of cursing, kind of?, referenced intense violence and murder, torture (past/remembered. not in graphic detail)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-09-19</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-09-19</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 07:54:26</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>3</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>103,728</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26548057</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ziracona/pseuds/Ziracona</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>As dedicated as she is to her God, Adiris has been struggling with some doubts since beginning her work at the gateway to Erṣetu. A simple decision to try to alleviate some of those doubts about the infidels she sacrifices to her God spirals wildly out of control, and lands her, Quentin, and Dwight in a situation none of them might be able to get back out of.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>28</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>108</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. The Leader</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/vietbluefic/gifts">Bluecoeur (vietbluefic)</a>.</li>



    </ul><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Adiris struggles with some long-term doubts she just can't kill. Dwight, Quentin, and the rest of the survivors have an unexpectedly good stroke of luck, and then a stoke of not so good luck.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Adiris let out a slow breath, gathering her courage, and then stepped out into the room.</p><p>It was pitch black in the hall at night, no torches kept lit in this part of the temple, and the only illumination she had to go by was the little candle she carried, nervous, and desperately careful to keep wax from seeping over the edge of the wooden base and onto the polished floor.</p><p>She wasn’t supposed to be here. Not really. It wasn’t a banned location, or one reserved only ever for the priests, but it was much more important than she was, and it wasn’t meant for her—not her alone, anyway. None of the temple was. And Adiris was supposed to be sleeping in her little closet room on the other side of the magnificent temple, not here alone at midnight in the far great hall. But she had had to come.</p><p>And there it was.</p><p>At the sight of it, Adiris felt her breath catch in her throat. It was her favorite part of the temple. The beautiful golden inlaid mural, detailing the entire epic of creation circling the edges of the relief in stages, and there dead center, framed by the epic, were the Gods—the <em>whole</em> pantheon, with meticulous care, and all centered around Enki, the god of Water and Creation, their God—<em>her </em>God. He was magnificent to look at. So much it made her want to cry. Gods, the wall was stunning. It had taken her breath the first time she had seen it, and every time after, just like it was now, and she had known that she <em>had </em>to see it up close too. Had felt it calling to her. She felt it now too.</p><p>Obeying the call in her heart, Adiris walked the little distance across the hall to stand in front of the relief, and staring at the beautiful carving of Enki, she had the overwhelming urge to reach out and touch him, but she forced herself to hold back, knowing it was so far from her place to do such a thing. Even so, she <em>wanted</em> it, more than anything. His wings looked so alive she felt sure they would be soft as real feathers if she felt them. And more than that, looking at his face, the closeness alone that she desired so much tugged at the inside of her chest.</p><p>“I know I am only seven,” whispered Adiris to the picture, staring into Enki’s golden eyes, “But I am here. If you want me. I know you have plans. I’m ready. I can do it.” She knelt down in front of the wall and set her candle on the floor and bowed her head. “I know I am still very young, but I’m growing fast. Whatever you have planned, I’ll make you proud.” She looked up into his face again, into his golden eyes, a fire burning in her own. “I know I can do it.”</p><p>And she had.</p><p>Adiris remembered that night now, so much later, walking through the freezing forests of Urashtu. Feeling the agony in her chest and arms and face with every step, the lack of pain or sensation any longer in her right foot at all. Hearing the labored breathing of her followers behind her. Smelling the stench of them all her incense burner could no longer hide.  She remembered many nights.</p><p>They had all been very much the same.</p><p>All the same, maybe, since that first night when she had been five and her mother and father had talked in worrying voices, and then her father had taken her with him to walk through the town, holding her hand, but not looking at her that entire long, long walk, so long it had made her feet ache. Even when she had asked Papa to carry her, had held her arms up to him, he hadn’t even looked down. He had stared straight ahead and said, “It isn’t far,” and that had been all, and she had been confused. Her feet had hurt so badly by the time they reached the temple. And when he’d told her to sit down, she’d been relieved. Because she hadn’t known then that he was going to leave her there. That she had made that walk to become a gift to the temple, a servant, more or less a slave—an object. Owned by the temple now, and destined for a life of orders and cleaning and preparing food; traded in because seven had been too many children for her parents to feed, and she had been the youngest, and so she had been the one they had known and loved the least, and it had been simple. Hard choices, her father had said. But a simple one. That had been the whole explanation, as best as she could ever understand, and her Papa had walked away from her on the temple steps, and he hadn’t looked back. She had hoped he would. She had thought, maybe if he did, she could believe he would come back for her. She could pretend he was sad, and missed her, when she looked out at the moon at night. But he didn’t, and she had been alone.</p><p>For two weeks, at the temple, Adiris had felt nothing. Her name had meant ‘<em>Fear</em>,’ and she had lived in it. Adiris had not known that fear could feel like a void, but it had consumed her. There had been nothing left; nothing at all. She had been empty, and dead. A little shell of a girl, wandering around, doing her best to move and act as she was told, as much life in her as a basket had, or a cart, or any unliving thing that could have moved the things she moved through the temple in the endless, meaningless days. And then, she had seen one of the statues. She had been carrying a jug of water to bring to one of the scribes, and for no reason really at all, she had glanced up, for the first time in days, and Enki had been looking back at her. A big statue, one of him standing as tall as a human man, with his hands clasped and his wings out behind him, and he had been looking right at her, and with the look she had suddenly been alive again. And she had been sure, beyond a shadow of a doubt in that instant, that he had a purpose for her. That the Gods were watching, because they had a future. She was going to be someone, someday, and they were watching. They cared.</p><p>That day <em>had</em> come, and it had come for her more quickly than she’d expected. She had still been just a girl, barely of age at all, when all at once the priests around her had begun to fall sick, and she had been asked to step in to perform rites. She had taken on so much work in the months before plague hit the city, just seeking out any ways she could find to help around the temple at all in her struggle to reach a place where the eyes on that statue would be watching her and the arms would be open too, that she had <em>known </em>all the rites—been the <em>only </em>healthy person in the entire temple who did. And suddenly, she had gone from servant to priestess, like fate. Like she had dreamed of for years. But Gods, getting everything she had wanted had terrified her, and she had been so afraid to do it wrong. And nervous and pacing agitatedly before her first ritual, she had stumbled onto a hidden room behind the priests’ sanctuary chamber, and in it a statue of a woman. It had been the goddess Ishtar, golden and beautiful and impossibly perfect, and she had had her arms outstretched. And Adiris hadn’t been able to believe it at first, and then her heart had broken with joy, because it had been the sign she had been praying for. The arms were outstretched for her, finally, finally, and she had rushed out to the crowd in the waiting temple chamber, wearing her ceremonial garb and the jeweled golden rings like claws she borrowed from the statue’s hands, prepared to do the Gods’ work and make them proud, and the moment a woman in the crowd had fallen to the ground during the Epic of Creation, and Adiris had reached her and seen black infection from the city’s horrible plague spreading up her foot, Adiris had severed her own toe with a dagger without a moment of hesitation, and offered the bloody appendage to the Gods in exchange for safety for the woman, and she had never been happier than with that little pool of blood spreading from her foot, because she <em>knew </em>that they would answer her. She knew this was the reason she had been born.</p><p>And now she was dying in a cave in the middle of a cold dark woods, and she knew it, and her followers dying with her knew it too.</p><p>She didn’t even have the energy to stand anymore. She was kneeling in a pool of vomit—her own, someone else’s, both, it didn’t even matter. It was all the same. She had been denying reality, and hiding symptoms behind veils and incense, but she had been dying for weeks now, and no ritual, no sacrifice, no prayer she had offered the Gods had even slowed it down. They were all dying. Everyone who had trusted her, and believed in her, and followed her out here because they had known that she could save them the way she had known as a little girl looking at that statue that someone must have had a reason for her to live after all, and both of their beliefs had been nothing but empty lies in the end. She was dying, and the Gods had abandoned her. And they were dying, and she had failed to save them.</p><p>People were retching, and crying, and convulsing. Most were too tired and dead to even move, and had simply slid down to the cave floor, and were shuddering there now, or laying still. Some were probably already dead. And Gods, she wanted to comfort them. Wanted to hold them, and make it easier—to do something for them, anything at all. But she couldn’t. She had no promise she could make, no hope or peace to give, and she was so weak herself, she couldn’t even go to them.</p><p><em>I know I am young, </em>thought Adiris, remembering the words she had spoken once in a much younger voice, <em>But I could do it. I could have done it. Why. Why have you left us to die? </em></p><p>She didn’t understand. Like she hadn’t understood when her father hadn’t looked back even once as she sat on the temple steps, begging him in her heart to do it—to do just that one little thing—to hesitate, to look back, to give her one last memory of his face to hold onto.</p><p><em>Was there never any purpose at all? </em>she wondered silently, looking up at the roof of the cave with a sunken heart and dead eyes, <em>Was I really only ever that? Just a little child, believing people loved her when they didn’t; that Gods might look back at her with favor, when all you really had in store was to punish the hubris of thinking I could have mattered to something so far above me by letting me have hope for my life before you left me to die in this cave? I. …I am sorry. I never meant to be proud. I only wanted to have a purpose. I was just so happy. Please. I don’t want to die like this. I don’t want them to die like this. Please don’t leave me. Please don’t leave me alone here to die like I never mattered to any of you at all. I thought I—I thought you had…I thought there was a <span class="u">reason</span> for it all. Please.</em></p><p>“Please,” she had whispered out loud, offering one last prayer. Feeling her body die, and desperate, and with no idea what else to do but hope that someone might once again be looking back if she found the strength to lift her head; that they could bring life into her body one last time, like that statue had done for her a lifetime ago. “I could do it. I could do anything at all. If you would only give me a chance. I want to be worthy of a purpose. I don’t want to die. <em>Please</em>. Please give me a chance to offer some kind of service that is worthwhile before I go on to the land of the dead. Please save them. It’s not their fault I was not who they needed. Please, please let me save them. Or take me, and keep them, let me find worth as a sacrifice at my death, but please.” Her voice sounded dead in her ears, and nothing like itself. She could feel bile running down her chin, and the stench of vomit and rotting flesh was overwhelming. “Please don’t leave me alone to just end as nothing but forsaken. Please.”</p><p>She had shut her eyes then, expecting to die, dead already inside, but hoping, clinging to that last desperate belief that she must matter to someone, that someone a long time ago must have had some reason to want her to be created at all, and she had looked up.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>
  <em>This can’t continue.</em>
</p><p>It was a cold night in the realm. They were all cold nights, and probably, that never truly varied much in temperature, but to Adiris, this one felt especially bitter. Maybe it was not really the weather that was so cold and bitter, though. Maybe it was her thoughts.</p><p>Adiris turned her head and looked out the window, struggling at once both to think through everything, and to keep her mind completely blank of any of it at all. Which was just as impossible to do simply by nature as the things she was trying to understand and forget themselves.</p><p>How had it started? She had wondered that so many times now—had tried to sit down and sift through memories and find a fault, find a specific point when she had turned in a bad direction, when she had something <em>wrong, </em>but no matter how much time she spent looking, she could never find one.</p><p>It had never been Adiris’ intent to take note of any of the infidels she hunted down and sacrificed for her God.</p><p>When she had gotten here, originally, she <em>hadn’t </em>taken note. She had simply felt rage, and felt it righteously. In all honesty, her very first ritual sacrificing infidels in this place, she had barely even felt <em>that</em>—mostly she had felt fear.</p><p>A lot had happened to Adiris that had been overwhelming and unexpected before in life, but nothing on a scale like this. She had been a high priestess in Babylon before, and that was overwhelming and incredible enough, but <em>here? </em>She <em>spoke </em>to a God—in its physical presence, <em>daily</em>. When Nergal had first told her her purpose, she had been excited—giddy even—thrilled. It—It was like…like being someone from the sacred texts and tales and epics she had studied, like being a Gilgamesh. Her! And to think, as a little girl whose hours were consumed with sweeting temple floors, she had only been going on faith to believe there was any plan out there at all in the world for her. And now she was caring for her followers and leading them in worshiping Nergal, and watching over an intensely holy site, and getting to be the first human in many years to read ancient texts her God gave <em>her</em> to study! And being chosen to alone perform one of his most sacred rituals? Even the thought of it at first had sent shivers of excitement down her spine. Nergal’s rituals were dark and painful, but that was simply Nergal’s nature, and he never failed them, and she was ready to do her part to return that kindness with loyalty and devotion. Her body itself was an offering, and happily so—every moment lived in the agony and deformation of the plague in her, the sickness that would neither kill her nor leave, it was a willing constant gift of endless pain to the God who loved her and had saved her life. Sometimes her followers would be called upon to offer up their bodies as a sacrifice willingly, and would die horribly in the midst of fire to him, but he would always bring them back if they died, instead of taking them to the depths of Erṣetu to join the dead, and he would bless them in return for the payment. They were not abandoned now. And it had been terrifying, and overwhelming, and <em>thrilling.</em></p><p>Until she had set foot in her first ritual.</p><p>And then, in the face of that sprawling woods and the darkness and the waiting hooks, hearing the wind whisper through the dead trees around her and the quiet rushing of water in little fountains amidst the utter emptiness and the waiting, thudding inevitability of the land of the dead, in that first and last second before the chase began? There had been <em>nothing </em>but fear. More utter and complete than she had ever felt it, even dying in that cave. Fear that she wouldn’t be able to live up to the expectations placed upon her, fear she was not the fated high priestess Nergal had told her on the night she had been saved and woken up here, at the mouth of Erṣetu, the gateway to the underworld itself, that she had always been destined to become. She had been <em>so</em> terrified that all of this was beyond her—that she could not <em>be </em>the girl in the story, had no place beside Enkidu and Gilgamesh and Shamhat, and that when she tried to do this task, she would disappoint him. That she would fail Nergal, and fail her followers, and fail herself. <strong><em>All</em></strong> she had felt that first ritual was fear and blind desperation, and she had worked as hard as she could to hunt the infidels before they lit all five beacons, using every skill she had ever learned, and somehow she had done it. She had sacrificed all four of the vile infidels, and she had been <em>so</em> proud of herself.</p><p>The power she had been given? It had…it had felt <em>incredible. </em>She had been so strong, and so fast, and so terrifying and awe-inspiring, and grand, and she had done it! She had been like the people in the epics she had studied so hard as a girl, and she had been worthy of it, and she could still remember exactly the feeling she had had in her chest, watching that last body raise into the air as a sacrifice to her new God, so pleased, so <em>impossibly </em>relieved. And more than that, excited now too. Excited, and happy, and proud. Because she had faced her challenge, and been worthy of it. She belonged. She had proved Nergal right. And he had joined her as that dark cloud in the sky he preferred as a form and said proudly, “You See? You were born for this,” and finally, <em>finally, </em>she had felt that old sense of peace and belonging and worth come back to her, and it had been all that she had ever wanted.</p><p>After her first few trials, confidence had slowly built, and <em>then</em> she had had the time for anger and hate. And they had been good feelings—just, and right, and powerful, and deserved. These infidels were monsters, and she <em>hated </em>them, and she should. Along with that hate she had felt her love for her followers, and fierce devotion to Nergal, and those three core emotions had fueled her, and she had cut them down like the sinners they were, and that had been it. That had <em>been </em>her new life.</p><p>And she didn’t know when she had <em>failed </em>in that. But <em>izzirtu</em>, she must have. Because it wasn’t like that anymore—it just wasn’t. She wished she knew what she had done wrong to forget, to invite weakness into her heart, but no matter how much she searched, there just was no one point for her to go back to in her head and say, “Why did you do that?” or, “This. This is what you should not have done,” and she was sorry; she was <em>so </em>sorry. She kind of wished that there <em>were </em>a point of failure for her to find<em>. </em>Tried to find it sometimes in her head on days something was bothering her. Usually while standing alone at the top of the temple, looking out over her people, and the realms beyond. Sometimes when it was really bad, she’d think it while performing a purification ritual and trying to rid herself of thoughts. But that failure didn’t exist.</p><p>Because <em>nothing</em> had happened, and she hadn’t <em>made </em>a choice. It had been hundreds of thousands of little things that had half-happened instead, slowly stacking and building and piling up until it had been big enough she had realized to her surprise that there <em>was</em> something there.</p><p>And she was so angry! She was so, <em>so angry! </em>How dare they! How fucking dare they! How dare <em><span class="u">she!</span></em> After everything that Nergal had done for her? He had saved her! He had given her purpose and her life back and offered her and her followers hope, and a future, and a sanctuary—he was <em>everything </em>to her, and she knew that—she loved him for it; she was <em>fiercely </em>loyal. If he had asked her to lay on the alter and cut out her own heart to offer to him, she would not have even hesitated to do it—he was <em>everything </em>that she had! And still, still, she was allowing herself to fail him. Not in her actions at least, because she was better than that, and actions were easier to control, but in her heart, and that was still bad enough. Gods, it was <em>so </em>bad. Because somehow, somewhere along the road, she had started to <em>pity</em> the infidels she hunted. And Gods, she had tried, for so, so long to pretend that wasn’t the case, but it was, and she knew it.</p><p>She knew it…</p><p><em>And how? </em>she had asked herself so many times, had asked herself earlier this day, while rubbing charcoal along her skin and trying to rid herself of the weakness through rituals, since she had no idea of any other way how anymore, <em>How could you feel that?</em></p><p>She didn’t even <em>understand </em>it. Because it had been so far from the truth at first.</p><p><em>I don’t understand, </em>thought Adiris hopelessly, tucking her knees up to her chest and looking out at the realm beside hers this cycle and barely even seeing it, <em>Why? What is <span class="u">wrong</span> with me? </em>It made her want to hate herself. She thought she kind of did now, even though she was supposed to love herself since she was a tool of her God, but. …But she…she had thought all of this to death, and the only answer she could ever find, even <em>maybe, </em>it—Gods—it was such a <em>bad</em> one. And she didn’t want to accept that about herself, that such an awful thing could be true, but it <span class="u">must</span> be.</p><p><em>Please, </em>thought Adiris miserably, glad for the walls all around her, the narrow stairway up to the top story where she was, and this little hidden corner with its window that was steadily becoming her favorite place in this new world. She buried her head against her knees, glad for the pain in her stomach and the urge to vomit that never really left her, because she deserved it. Deserved it not just as a living sacrifice to honor her God with her continued pain, and to be carrying his work in her body, but deserved it as punishment too now. <em>I’m sorry. I don’t want to be this way. Please, fix me. Change me. Make me stronger. Make me better. I don’t want to be this. I don’t want to fail you. </em>She felt herself choke up, and her body start trying to cry, and fought it back down. It had been so long since she had cried, and she wouldn’t do it now. She was a high priestess for a God; she was living in the gateway to Erṣetu; she was beyond mortal things. She had been chosen, and made sacred, and she had to get past mortality and everything terrible about it that was making her so weak—such a disappointment, so…so worthless, and unlovable, and horrible, and unforgivable, and so <em>utterly </em>selfish.</p><p><em>Please, I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I don’t want to be this way, </em>she thought again, huddled in the corner where no one could ever see her and be disappointed in their proud and perfect high priestess for her failures and the lie of what she was still only pretending to be. Her shoulders were trembling with the urge to cry now, but she choked it back again and made herself not. She could at least do that. If not control her feelings, izzirtu, she could control her actions, and she was going to.</p><p>But Gods, she was <em>so </em>miserable.</p><p>She hated herself. She <em>hated </em>herself, and she wanted it to stop. Fuck. She was better than this! She had been. She <em>had </em>been, she knew it. She had been righteous, and felt nothing at all towards the monsters she hunted, except fury, and she had been perfect, been everything Nergal had believed her to be. A-and it had only been little things at first, tiny chinks in that perfect armor. Truly, <em>truly </em>Adiris had <em>never</em> meant to pay any attention to the infidels, or to care—Gods forbid to have <em>sympathy </em>for them. It was unthinkable. And yet, just by being around them so much, there were…were all these little things she had just sort of…begun to know. Whether she wanted to or not. Like that there was a girl, small and with dark hair in a style common enough with people from her own home that it had felt familiar, and an extremely pale boy who looked at all times exhausted, and both of them seemed to serve as doctors to the group. Or that there was a large young man with muscles that acted as a bodyguard, and a much older man with a necklace with a large gold pendant covered in markings that must be some kind of symbol of his kingdom who did the same. Or that there was a boy, very pale and with black hair and a white shirt, and he was their leader.</p><p>There was him.</p><p>She had. <em>Thought. </em>Longer ago, and in a vague way only, that—that perhaps the older man with grey hair and a casual, cocky smile he kept even in this place was the leader of the group of blasphemers, if they had such a thing. And oh they <em>did</em> have such a thing, but he wasn’t it. It was the pale boy with black hair and a white shirt. It had <em>always </em>been the boy. … And Gods, he was<em> so </em>young, but not just young, he was exactly the same age she…</p><p>It was so. So <em>distressing. </em>To notice these things. Adiris couldn’t even really pick out how she knew most of it at all. It had just—just <em>seeped </em>in. No matter how hard she tried, there was just no day she’d done something wrong. It had been infinite little things all together that taught her, knowledge of the other group gained unintentionally and in fragments, but she had it now and it was him who led them, she was sure of it, and they <em>were </em>a group. Not separated stragglers, not just the remnants of troops who barely knew each other, even if they had begun that way, oh no; they were a unit now. And it was the boy. The young man, just barely older…<em> than me. </em>She had thought that, the day she realized, maybe the <em>moment</em> she had. Barely older than she had been, when she had stepped out into a room full of people and become a priestess when everyone else who had done the job before her had fallen to the plague. And it had felt so wonderful that first day in Babylon, but it…it had been hard. She… ….At such a…young… --It was odd, but he. They couldn’t be such different ages <em>now, </em>could they? Fuck, it shouldn’t matter! It <em>shouldn’t </em>matter. And she couldn’t know—she didn’t even know how long <span class="u">she’d</span> been here, or if she had aged at all! But, her…her face did look the same to her, on the rare occasions she had felt strong enough to look at it in the reflective surface of a piece of metal. So…</p><p>Izzirtu! Izzirtu. And damn <em>her </em>too<em>. </em>Why? Why couldn’t she stop? What did any of that matter? It shouldn’t! Objectively, it didn’t—it couldn’t! She knew what he was and what he’d done—what all of them were. Who cared if he was young, and leading these stragglers? They were all infidels, proud and vile, taking a stand against her God, murdering those like her. They would have killed her, she was sure, if they had had the chance, and loved doing it, but it...She just. …just… …</p><p>She had seen them once, from atop the temple. Sitting in the same little nook she was in now. Even before existence here had become such a struggle, she had gone there often, wishing to be alone, and she had been looking out the window, because it was a good view. So high up, she could see a lot around her, and that was often interesting—especially when she was beside one of Nergal’s more active followers. The segments of the underworld shifted periodically, though—a part of the chaos of Nergal’s domain—and she had not been beside one of his servants that week, her temple had been bordering the place the infidels stayed, which it did only rarely. Even on the times she had been beside them before, Adiris had never even once <em>seen</em> the infidels, because they stayed by their campfire. She had never actually <em>seen </em>the campfire itself either—not in person, well, except in the distance at the end of a ritual if an infidel managed to escape, but she knew it was out there. The light changed the air above their realm and made it bright, and Nergal had given her an idea of it, when explaining things to her the first time. The edge of their cage was so far from that fire, though, and the woods dense, so she and the other servants or Nergal would have only ever been able to see them at all if they decided to walk around their border, and she had never thought they would <em>do </em>such a thing, but that week, they had.</p><p>Adiris had had no idea <em>why, </em>but the whole group of them had been going through the edge of the woods together, talking, and she had been able to see them for several minutes as they passed. That day, the boy with glasses and a white shirt had been at the head of the group, and walking backwards off and on to talk to the people behind him, and she had simply been surprised, so she had kept looking, wondering. And from the window, she had seen that the boy was talking animatedly to the people behind him and making whatever point he was making with passion, and they had been smiling as they listened. <em>Smiling. </em>Even trapped at the edge of Erṣetu, suffering here endlessly at the gate of the netherworld, <em>smiling</em>, after so many times killed. Smiling, while knowing they would never have a chance. And she was sure in that instant that the boy was rallying them. Giving them promises of some way out someday, or maybe of a way to kill the God they had come here to slay, as impossible as they all must know by now that that was. But, no. No. It had seemed so…peaceful. He was smiling, and talking with passion, but not with violence and heat, in a tone that was so much more like performing a rite than a war council, and so she had felt sure in her heart that he could only be promising them a way to escape. Promising some kind of different future, of going home and living again, if they could just follow him—because what else would a leader ever have been able to say in such a way that could get a reaction like that? And she’d been unable to turn away until they were out of sight, and felt a way she hadn’t before after, and prayed for hours trying to rid herself of it.</p><p>Maybe that had been the sin. The fault. Choosing to watch them. But she had conquered that moment of weakness, so it <em>couldn’t </em>be, right? She was so <em>sure</em> she had. She had sat alone in the belly of the temple, and cleared her mind, and forced herself to live in the awful memories Nergal has showed her on her first night here, and that had done it. Of course it had. Because hating them was right and just, and that moment of pity, or of…of-commonality, or whatever it had been, had been traitorous, and foolish, and undeserved.</p><p>The memories from Nergal were almost unbearable, but she had needed to see them again. Nothing could fail to kill pity in its heart in the face of that sight, she had been sure. It was <em>so</em> awful. Her first night, when he had explained what her rituals would be for him as his priestess if she chose to serve him, he had also explained where the infidels had come from. And... <em>Gods, Gods, I am so sorry. How can I remember that even now and still be so weak? I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. </em>It was not a pleasant story.</p><p>They had come from a country far to the west. Serving pagan Gods, and seeking violence, drunk on war. Nergal was not like most of the Gods—he was a domain of chaos and violence, and people often feared him. Cuth had followed him, but most of his temples were small, and isolated. Little markers of faith in the north beyond Babylon. And isolation had made the foreign monsters hungry for blood. And Gods, they had gotten it. They had come in the night, and overrun his isolated temples in the mountains, breaking down walls and destroying statues and altars and tapestries, and they had hunted his priests laughing, jeering. They were unarmed—nothing but ritual daggers to even defend with, and they had been dragged from the temples screaming, and tied to pyres and burned alive as offerings to foreign gods, and defiled, and humiliated, and mercilessly destroyed. She had seen priestesses so much like herself, barely older, backed into their inner sanctum, watching the doors shatter, and men come and drag them out, watched them thrown up on alters and cut slowly to pieces, a finger at a time, a toe, then a wrist, a foot, all the while the crowds of warriors jeering and laughing. No mercy, no hesitation, not even decency in the destruction of their enemies, or dignity. Adiris had seen much suffering in her short life, but nothing, <em>nothing </em>as horrible as this. Nothing even close. It had made her weep. She had just wanted to stop them. Wanted to end the suffering for the priestesses faster. To do something, anything to make it just <em>end. </em></p><p>And even that had not been enough for the infidels. Drunk on power and murder and blood, they had forged on. All the way here, to Erṣetu. Found the doorway in the mountains of Urashtu, and pried it open with hubris and the blood of Nergal’s followers they had taken, and the blood of their own who had been injured, cast aside as worthless now, and they had stepped willingly into the first gateway of Erṣetu itself with every intention and belief of slaying a God.</p><p><em>Slaying. A God. </em>It was unthinkable. Horrific—it—it was the most proud and insane thing she had ever heard! And to do such a thing if it were possible? It would—it would destroy everything! Any domain left without balance could collapse the world. But the pagans had showed no hesitation, no thought. And Nergal had let them come, and then closed the door behind them, and smiled, because he had a long, long time to make them pay for the priestesses who had died calling his name. And Gods, he <em>would </em>answer their call. And he had. He had, and she had helped him, and it had been, right, and just, and she had felt nothing, <em>nothing</em>, but <em>contempt</em> for the infidels. And reliving those memories, feeling the phantom sensation of blood in her nostrils and shuddering at the awfulness of that much depravity and violence and hate, she had been strong again, and okay, and the way she should have been from the start.</p><p>And she had stayed that way, until two weeks later.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>“Okay, but the thing about that is, if we fuck it up, all of us <em>die,</em>” said Jake, gesturing with an open palm very matter-of-factly as he glanced at the group around him.</p><p>“…God damn it, he’s right.” said Dwight, lowering his hand from his chin, “It’s too big a risk.”</p><p>“No, come on!” argued Nea, “We could do it!”</p><p>“If we don’t, ‘what’s the backup’ is the real question,” added in Jeff, “We can’t just do nothing.”</p><p>“Yes, but we can’t just all go running to our likely deaths either,” said Jane thoughtfully.</p><p>Jake gave an <em>exactly </em>gesture in her direction.</p><p>“Okay—hear me out,” said Quentin, “What if we keep the plan, but we try to work in some kind of a back door—a way to escape.”</p><p>“Like what?” asked Kate.</p><p>“It doesn’t matter,” said Dwight unhappily, exhaling heavily, “We can’t plan an escape, because if we <em>don’t </em>get this done somehow in time, we’re dead anyway.”</p><p>“Okay, but not <em>literally,</em>” said Quentin, “We’re just fucked. And this is the best plan we have, so unless you’ve got something better, ‘give it our best shot but have an escape plan in place’ is better than ‘do nothing’ <em>or</em> ‘do the plan with no ejection seat’.”</p><p>“Fair,” acknowledged Dwight, giving him a quick smile, “But I just really think there must be some other way we’re missing.” He glanced around the group. “Thoughts?”</p><p>“…I know you’re all gonna yell at me and say no because everyone says never split up, that’s how you die, that’s rule one,” offered Claudette tentatively, “But what if we split up?”</p><p>“….Could that work?” asked Jake like the realization he hadn’t been able to immediately shoot that down stunned him.</p><p>“Actually, yeah. If I’m alone I can go right in the front,” said Tapp.</p><p>“Wait, really?” said Dwight, “Wait—how. I thought none of us could?”</p><p>“No, holy shit, I think he’s actually right,” said Feng, “Do you still have your original pass in your bag?”</p><p>“Yeah, I kept it and the—” Tapp stopped mid-sentence and got a funny look on his face, hearing, like everyone in the circle suddenly and very loudly was,  a noise like an elephant was going to come through in about 2.5 seconds and trample them all to death from the direction of the woods, “What the hell?”</p><p>Meg Thomas burst out of the woods at the edge of the clearing, so out of breath she was gasping for air like someone who’d nearly drowned, David a half-second behind and similarly about to pass out from the intensity of the sprint.</p><p>“It’s open!” coughed out Meg excitedly, beaming despite her ragged breathing, “Th—the Chapel!”</p><p>“What?” said Dwight, giving her a weird look.</p><p>“We went,” she gasped out between breaths, “To see. And—no Clown!”</p><p>Several people around the fire got it.</p><p>“Oh my God…” said Laurie, eyes widening, “You’re sure?”</p><p>“Yes!” said David happily, “He’s in the Nurse’s area right now! We’re borderin’ her on the far side, an saw ‘em first circlin’, but we got the Chapel too—back over there!” He waved enthusiastically over his left shoulder.”</p><p>“Wait, so!” asked Claudette excitedly, bolting to her feet, “We can. We could go <em>in </em>there?”</p><p>Meg was already nodding before the sentence was even halfway out. “Yes! We can go collect supplies and plants for you and shit! Glass even! Come on! Quick! Before the Entity decides to move things again faster than it ever has before just to spite us!!”</p><p>“Okay!” said Dwight excitedly, on his feet now too, “Awesome—this is—this is great! Let’s go. Uh. Everyone—”</p><p>“—Oh hey, did you guys actually come up with a plan to get into the keep?” asked Meg, noticing her hand-drawn map on the ground and the copious notes a couple of them had been taking strewn around beside it.</p><p>“Yeah!” said Claudette, proud of their work, “I think so.”</p><p>“Oh, worm?” asked Meg excitedly, “I thought you guys said you were fucked—told you you’d—"</p><p>“—Guys!” said Dwight, clapping in the air between them to get their focus back, “I’m happy we might all survive the next D&amp;D meet too, and I’m really glad Meg talked us into playing, but this is a real-life-actually-happening kind of important event! Can we focus please?”</p><p>“Sorry,” said Meg sheepishly and Claudette worriedly at the exact same time.</p><p>“Okay, everybody,” said Dwight, back to addressing the whole group, “Let’s move out as quick as we can! Take as many empty containers as you think you can carry back full. We’ll break into teams. Claudette, take whoever you need out of the people best at plant identification—which would beee Adam, Jake, Quentin, Kate, Laurie, and Ace?” She was nodding. “Get whichever you need, and get stuff collected—keep a list of the finds. The rest of you, and anybody Claudette doesn’t need, come with me. We’ll hit the chapel itself first, and then break into teams from there once we see what we’ve got to work with. Let’s keep one person in the campfire realm at all times just in case too, because it would be just like the Entity to do this to us for the express purpose of getting us all to be out of the realm at the same time, so it can shuffle locations again and stick us in a campfire base we’ve never been to before so we lose all our shit, and I am <em>not </em>losing the research we’ve got because I took easy bait.”</p><p>“That’s horrifying, and I’m glad you thought of it,” said Ace supportively, pausing to clap him on the shoulder on his way to hurrying over to his stash to start dumping out medkits and toolboxes to carry stuff.</p><p>“Take a spear or something too, just in case,” added Jake, giving Dwight a similarly supportive nod and then snagging a sharpened stake for himself from a pile he’d made and kept by one of the logs.</p><p>“Yes—good call,” agreed Dwight, pointing, “That, and empty containers. But don’t overburden. –the Chapel’s really empty?” he double-checked, because it was almost too good to believe. They knew by now of course that the Clown genuinely just <em>didn’t</em> always stay in his “Home” area—thought they had no idea why. Every killer seemed to have one, and which ones bordered their own realm randomized every so often, but no killer besides the Clown <em>ever </em>seemed to leave their home base area—Dwight wasn’t even sure they <em>could. </em>The Clown though? Dwight had seen him in the Nurse’s asylum yard before, off in the woods outside the old MacMillan estate, lurking at the foggy edges of Badham Preschool deep within his colorful old cart, his horribly warped looking horse always harnessed up to the thing or sitting beside it. No explanation. No reason to it. But the man…drifted. Just seemed to. And of course, of <em>course</em> that meant sometimes his own “Home” area—if you could call it that, Dwight was pretty sure it must have been the Nurse’s once, because it looked so <em>much </em>like the asylum he felt it must have been just some other chunk of it once or something—would have to end up vacated while he was off caravanning around in his stupid fucking murder clown cart. Just. They’d never been adjacent to the place when it <em>was</em> empty before. They weren’t by the Chapel that much period, and the times they had been—at least, since they’d started constantly monitoring what realms were adjacent to them at all times in case it might somehow help—it had always had the Clown inside. It had never occurred to Dwight the place would still be in rotation when it was empty. But if it was? If it really, really was? God. That. It would be a <em>gold mine</em> for them. They could steal carpets to use as blankets—glass for improvised weapons, or whatever else they might need? Lab work Adam was trying to do, maybe? Rocks to make a little table out of even, if they could haul enough flatstone—maybe some real <em>metal </em>too!—Not to mention the plants, or the possibility of scoring a broken church pew, or <em>candles</em>—b-but he was getting ahead of himself. That all depended with great entirety on this actually being safe. Meg was looking back at him with a grin, though, and so was David, and they both looked <em>damn </em>sure.</p><p>“Is empty,” promised David.</p><p>Dwight let out a breath and smiled, trying to believe it. It was like an answer to prayer. “Then let’s get moving!”</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>Being inside the chapel grounds was miraculous.</p><p><em>I can’t believe it, </em>Quentin kept thinking, collecting armfuls of a flower Claudette had been overjoyed to find and called ‘willowherb’ and proclaimed excitedly was useful as food and medicine and hadn’t even expected to find a couple patches of out here in the churchyard, <em>This is great. </em></p><p>Maybe it shouldn’t have felt like <em>such </em>a big deal—it wasn’t freedom or anything. But. God, it felt <em>really </em>good, and everyone was happy. Claudette had found a multitude of useful plants so far, and he’d seen people hauling all kinds of stuff from the Chapel and its surrounding area. They were going to have some real promising supplies—I mean, <em>blankets? </em>Finally? After all this time? –Well, okay, rugs technically, but who cared! It felt like…</p><p>He looked up at the stained-glass windows in the ancient stone building on his far right and smiled at it. God. It was <em>so </em>beautiful. He’d always thought so, but he’d never really gotten a chance to just…look at it in peace before. It really was peaceful here by the chapel right now, though—serene, ruins or no. And it felt like an answer to prayer.</p><p>Things had been going pretty rough for them lately. <em>I mean, </em>he thought sheepishly, carefully laying his collection in one of the emptied toolboxes he’d brought, <em>Things are <span class="u">always</span> going pretty rough, but. </em>But things had been especially bad. They’d really needed something good—something tangible—something to rally to. He’d been so exhausted for so long, hoping and believing, and pushing and fighting to get other people to stay hopeful and keep believing too, keep hunting for a way out, and finally, finally something just <em>really </em>good was happening to them. Even if it wasn’t that major, it <em>felt </em>major, and they were going to get to sleep under blankets in the cold tonight, and he’d heard Adam and Jake talking about making a table out of some flatstone, and that meant they’d be having supper—an organized supper that was going to taste <em>especially</em> new and good and refreshing with all these finds Claudette had made, and they were going to have it on a real table, like real, normal people back home, all sitting together like a family, and then they’d get to turn in and curl up for bed under blankets for the first time in years.</p><p>Off by the chapel, he saw Jeff carrying out a whole candlestick—one as tall as he was, and with like eight-to-twelve lit candles in it, and he couldn’t look away. Maybe it was dumb to find so much significant in something so small, but.</p><p>“Thank you,” whispered Quentin to the waiting building, smiling at it again. It was a little sad, to be taking all this from a church. The red rugs with their gold trim he’d been watching people carry out, and the old metal candlesticks that always stayed lit were a big part of what made it beautiful, even falling apart like this, but he was sure it was what God, and even the building itself, would have wanted. It was something put in place to provide shelter to humans, and if this was the best way it could do it, it was the right way.</p><p>It still all felt…kind of unreal to him. But. In a good way. He’d been praying since the day he got here for a lot of things—mostly for people to find a way out, and for Freddy to die, or to at least stay trapped here forever, even if he ended up having to stay trapped in here with him. But for a lot of other things too. For hope, for help, for strength. Sometimes just for a sign he was being heard at all, because. Well, it. Nothing could feel much more lonely than this place did, could it? Or more abandoned. It was like being <em>in </em>Hell, real, Biblical Hell, and still praying. Even if that wasn’t what it really was. And still, he <em>had</em> kept praying, for so long with no answers, because he’d believed, and finally, he’d gotten what he’d been waiting for. Gotten an answer and a sign that someone was still up there listening, and watching, and cared, and today was the happiest he had felt in a long, <em>long</em> time.</p><p>“Thank you,” he whispered again, glancing up at the stained-glass windows in the ancient chapel’s second-story again, and then shutting his eyes and just letting himself feel how good life was for once in this fleeting happy moment in time. <em>Thank you.</em></p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>It had been a simple ritual that had ruined Adiris’ life.</p><p>Nothing at all of importance had really happened in it—it was all just routine. Adiris had been given a little trouble by the pale girl with her hair shaved almost to the scalp on one side and was so catlike, because she’d brought a powerful torch and was pretty good at using it, but even with that annoyance, Adiris had been doing fairly well. They’d been perhaps just under halfway through the time a ritual usually took when she had found the boy who was the leader and the girl who had given her so much trouble earlier working together on a beacon that was perhaps 60% of the way to lighting. They hadn’t seen her coming in time and startled, and the mechanism for the beacon had sparked and lurched, and the girl had fallen back from it, but when the boy had tried to do the same, he’d gotten his hand caught on something in the machine and been stuck. Usually, with one of her prey trapped and such an easy target, Adiris would have gone for him first, but the girl had been wounded already and she had known if she didn’t get her now, she would trouble again like she had been earlier, with that torch, so she’d ignored the boy and gone after the girl, prioritizing what would help her in the long run, and brought her incense burner against the girl’s back like a mace with a righteous fury only maybe four seconds later when the girl had just missed making it to a pallet she could have thrown down as a barrier to buy herself a little time.</p><p>All of the infidels spoke a foreign language Adiris didn’t know, but the girl had started to shout then. Calling out, Adiris had been sure, knowing the words or not, for the boy to come save her, because she had fallen by a pallet, and he might be able to use that to help her. Adiris had been slammed in the head by enough of the things to know the pain of it quite well, and had glanced over at the boy still by the gen five feet away, gauging if she would need to strike him down before taking this one to be sacrificed, but he had still been caught there. From the angle she was at by the pallet, she could see now that when he had tried to jump away from the sparks, he must have let go of what he’d been working on, and two of the pieces of metal he’d been trying to move had slipped and locked back into their original place with his left thumb lodged between them, and the boy was trying desperately to pry them open again and rip his hand free, but he was failing, and still securely trapped. Adiris could tell the metal was beginning to give a <em>little, </em>so she was sure he would get free, and probably fast enough she would have to chase him down, but certainly not in time to stop her from sacrificing the girl. She didn’t really mind losing him for a bit—he wasn’t the best at fleeing her, and that chance was preferable to going over and wounding him and giving one of the other infidels time to run over here to fight with her, and she did <em>not</em> want to lose the catlike girl again after having been caused so much irritation and a little humiliation by her earlier, so, reassured there was no immediate threat hooking the girl she had downed, Adiris had turned back to her prey and taken the last two steps under the upright pallet and stooped to pick her up. She had seen movement by the gen in her periphery and heard the girl still calling what could only be either “Help” or the boy’s name in her tongue, and heard the boy scream in what sounded like agony, and thought nothing of it at all except maybe that it was a bit odd as she had lifted the wounded girl onto her shoulder to take to a hook.</p><p>And then the weight of a pallet being thrown down with enormous force had <em>CRACKED </em>against her skull and she had cursed and stumbled back, eyes shutting on impulse, and she lost her grip on the girl she’d thrown over her shoulders, and heard running, and by the time she’d straightened up and looked again, they were several yards away already and still running hard, side-by-side. No—almost side-by-side, but him a step behind, shielding her.</p><p>Adiris had been furious at losing her prey and misjudging the boy’s chance of escaping, especially after the humiliation of failing to catch the catlike girl twice before the same day, and had cursed aloud and crushed the pallet to nothing with her sharp metal incense burner in fury, then gone to the beacon they had been at to do the same to their progress lighting it, trying to re-focus on her duty, and she had stopped cold.</p><p>Because there had been a bloodied and discarded little hand saw there by the beacon, and lodged in between two pieces of metal, close enough to free again that he had to have been sure he’d have gotten it in the next twenty seconds at most if he’d just kept trying, was a human thumb. A bloodied, severed, human thumb. And she. She h. Adiris. Just. She hadn’t…hadn’t known…how to process the sight. And Gods, it. It.</p><p>…It had consumed her. In that moment, all, <em>all </em>that she had been able to see was herself. Was the way it had felt that first day as a priestess in Babylon, when she had raised that wickedly sharp jeweled dagger and torn through her own toe. The way it had looked in her hand, still bleeding, when she had raised it up and offered it to the Gods; a hesitationless sacrifice for the life of a woman who had collapsed from illness in her temple.</p><p>And he.</p><p>He had. She couldn’t stop looking at the thumb. It was like the rest of the world had ceased to exist. Because he. Gods. With so little hesitation. He could not even be sure that this would be enough to <em>save</em> the girl. Only that it would have given him time to hit her with the pallet and give the girl a fighting chance to run. And for that. For that <em>tiny </em>fragment of hope, he had sawed off his thumb, alone, with only the strength of one hand. To save her. To try to save her. He couldn’t have even been sure. But then. She. Adiris hadn’t been sure either, when she’d severed her own toe... She had just had faith. And it.</p><p><em>Gods. </em>Letting all this run through her head again, in her little corner of the temple, Adiris squeezed her eyes shut and let the sharp golden rings she wore like talons dig into her hand. She—she had <em>tried</em> to tell herself it wasn’t the same—that the boy was nothing like her—that he—that he knew he would heal back after this—and he did, didn’t he? He wouldn’t be without a thumb forever. And that fact should have been enough to kill the rot the sight had created in her chest, but she had thought, <em>But the pain would have been the same, and the difficulty of making yourself do it,</em> and she knew it was true, and she… For every second of watching him with only nine fingers in the remainder of that ritual, Adiris had tried <em>so </em>hard to shake the way that moment had made her feel. And then tried again, in every normal ritual and moment away from the infidels after, but she just <em>couldn’t</em>. She kept trying to figure out what was so wrong in her, what she had done to create this weakness in her heart, but she just…</p><p><em>How can you do this? </em>she berated herself, feeling sicker from the immense guilt of the thought than the plague that would live eternally in her body. She knew, though. She had thought it to death, and could only find one answer for the weakness in her heart, and the hesitation, and the fact she could not forget that thumb.</p><p>…and it was pride.</p><p>Gods, she hated herself. She was so, immensely, immeasurably guilty, and full of shame and self-loathing. She didn’t want to be proud—she didn’t mean to be. But there was just no other interpretation, was there? Because the facts were so simple. She knew—she had <em>seen </em>the abominations these people had inflicted on people like her, on Nergal’s priestesses and followers, and even with those memories of atrocities in her heart, she had seen a boy her age promising hope, and seen him cut off his thumb the way she had severed her toe, and that had made her feel sympathy, and kinship, and pity, and the only—the <em>only possible explanation</em> for that horrible truth was that she must think that his similarity to her was more important than the atrocities he had committed to people she had never met.</p><p>And Gods—Gods, <em>how </em>could she think that! But she must—she must be prideful and self-important and rotten to the core in a way she had not even known people could <em>be, </em>because there was just no other explanation for feeling this way. There wasn’t. She must be some kind of awful she had never known, because ever since that day, there was a part of her that wouldn’t stop wondering if maybe his action could mean something. If maybe the infidels were monsters, and full of hate and violence and profane, and had done many awful things, but—but perhaps were not all thoroughly past saving. And she hated herself for that thought, because it was awful, and traitorous, and Gods, it must be so proud, thinking she could see the truth better than Nergal, and she <em>knew </em>she had to be wrong, but she couldn’t kill it.</p><p>So she simply lived in this little bubble of hate and despair. No idea how to climb back out of it, or how to become someone worthwhile. Just despairing, and unable to ask her people for help, because to do that would be to admit she was not special and perfect, like she was meant to be, was not always going to have the answers, and it would let them all down. And too afraid to ask Nergal, because if he knew that she was that unworthy of his mercy, what if he decided to discard her like the rest had? What if she would be left again, alone, sitting, waiting for the thing she had had hope in to just look back at her even once while it left so she could believe she had mattered to it even a little bit, and have to discover it had always been just a matter of time before it left her to die and vanished forever without so much as a backwards glance. …Maybe the reason for those moments in the past was because she didn’t deserve the glance. Maybe she had been wrong about many things. Maybe her parents had given her to the temple, because somehow they had known. Maybe that was why Enki had left her to die without even the comfort of his presence with her in that cave. Maybe it was only a matter of time before it happened again. Maybe she should let it. Maybe that was her fate. Maybe it was what she deserved.</p><p>Despairing and exhausted, Adiris lifted her head and stared blankly at nothing past the window. Vaguely, she registered movement out there, but she didn’t care. And then after a few seconds she remembered that that was odd, because she was beside the little temple made of stone and colored glass windows this rotation, and this morning it had been completely empty, and surprised by two facts that together were not making sense, Adiris left behind what she had been thinking about and looked out the window for real. To her astonished horror, her glance was met with the sight of the <span class="u">entire pack of infidels</span> hurrying around the area adjacent to her own like a piece of food left out overrun by ants.</p><p><em>WHAT? </em>She sat bolt-upright and leaned almost dangerously out over the sill trying to get a better angle.</p><p>This was unheard of! But Gods—they were there! Why on earth? They had to know that entering a holy site would get them killed by its keeper! But. As she watched, no one came to defend the little temple adjacent to her own.</p><p><em>That is right—it. It was unguarded this morning, </em>she remembered again, still gaping at the unexpected sight before her, and then, with considerable horror, <em>Wait. What are they doing?</em></p><p>But she knew. She knew almost immediately, as they split up and poured inside and onto the grounds surrounding the temple and she faintly began to pick up the sounds of commotion and things thudding in the distance. <em>They’re…they are ransacking the temple.</em></p><p>Immediately, everything else she had been thinking about and all the shame and guilt hit her with more force than it ever had before, and the intensity of it twisted in her gut like a knife.</p><p><em>Of course—of course they would! </em>She had always known this! This? This was <em>nothing </em>compared with Nergal’s memories! How was she surprised? She knew what they were! <em>Selfish, stupid, weak! You only care <span class="u">now</span>, watching it yourself? </em>She was hearing the hateful words in her head at the same time she was hearing herself say <em>I’m sorry, </em>again and again, and it was overwhelming. She hadn’t meant to! She had never meant to care. All at once, she was being bowled over by the phantom sensation of blood in her nostrils, images of priestesses screaming as they were ripped to shreds slowly in a mob playing through her head. <em>Fuck. How have you been so weak to even consider that any of this might be forgivable! IDIOT—what are you doing?! Nergal—the temple! Fuck! </em></p><p>“Nergal!” she called out to the empty room, turning from the window quickly with her pulse racing. Almost immediately, she felt his heavy presence in the air, and as she saw the dark cloud beginning to form, Adiris prostrated herself on the ground and bowed her head against the cold stone, folding her arms in front of it.</p><p>Even after all this time, it still made her heart thud for him to be so near to her—to be <em>in </em>the presence, so literally and completely, of a God. And <em>now? </em>When moments ago she had been thinking such traitorous things? Thinking of pity? She wanted to die.</p><p>“Adiris,” came the answer from above her in that voice that was somehow a whisper made of a thousand little voices at once, and still was truly only one voice at its heart—Nergal’s. It sent shivers down her spine and she kept her head bowed, praying he wouldn’t know. Praying he might forgive her if he did. <em>I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. Please, please forgive me. I would never betray you—I know it. I love you—I owe you everything. I am faithful. I just am weak, and my heart is stupid, but I would never let it lead my actions. Please let that be enough.</em></p><p>“It is the infidels,” informed Adiris shakily, trying not to cry and keeping her head still against the floor and her eyes shut, “I have never seen them attempt to attack or destroy before, but they are doing it right now! Just outside—I have seen them defiling your temple!”</p><p>“Rise,” came Nergal’s answer.</p><p>That had not only been an invitation to look at him, but a request to keep speaking, from the way he had said it, so she did both, straightening up until she was simply kneeling before him. She had never seen his true face—it was quite possible that such a thing would kill a mortal—but he was here none the less, amassed as a dark cloud with long sharp talons like thorns or branches from a sacred tree, the way he always met her if he manifested himself physically, and it was just as overpowering as it always was to be this close to him. He <em>felt </em>like fear, and power, if these concepts could be solidified enough into a physical form that if you sunk your hand into them it would shrivel up and be killed by the touch. She had always sort of thought that if she ever tried to touch the cloud, which she would <em>never </em>do, that that was what would happen.</p><p>“The temple with colored glass,” continued Adiris like he had requested, turning a little on her knees and pointing out the window on her right. The locations in Nergal’s realm shifted often, a part of his innate chaos, but probably there had been no need to inform him where anything was in his own domain and she felt silly and ashamed having done it immediately after the words were out, and hurried to move past that. “Usually it is guarded by one of your servants, but it is unattended, and the infidels are destroying it!”</p><p>It was still unbelievable to her that they had just…<em>gone in, </em>so unafraid, so hesitationless. Though somehow, she was relieved they had, because she had <em>needed </em>to see such despicable behavior herself… <em>You bastard! </em>she shouted at herself in her head the second that thought really hit home, <em>You’re relieved?! What is wrong with you! You—you think your—your weakness being cured is more important than the sacred site of your God being defiled? Gods! Is there nothing good about you at all?? </em>That was so selfish. How did she think things like that? <em>That’s not fair, </em>she tried to defend herself, <em>I-it was only an impulse—I see now what being relieved about this would mean, and I am not! Of course I do not care more for myself! I love him! </em>And that was true—she was desperately loyal and thankful to the God that had given her mercy and purpose, and the thought gave her a little bit of relief. Let her breathe again, at least.</p><p>“So I see,” answered Nergal, and it was hard to tell what he thought or even if this <em>was </em>news to him, from his tone. It was often hard for Adiris to tell, but then, Gods were not like mortals. Of course they would not sound the same.</p><p>“May I chase them off?” asked Adiris, calming down a little, because she was beginning to feel anger towards them now that her panic and despair were fading, and that was good—it was right—it was who she <em>wanted </em>so badly to be, and she was being that version of her right in this moment, “I could make an example of one for you, and leave their body hanging from a stake as a warning.”</p><p>“No,” said Nergal.</p><p>
  <em>No?</em>
</p><p>“Let them.”</p><p>“<em>Let </em>them?” echoed Adiris, horrified, “But—my God, please, they are defiling your holy site. Please let me go!” She bowed her head against the floor again, heart pounding. “Let me defend you! They cannot go unpunished.”</p><p>“Adiris, rise,” said Nergal again.</p><p>She did, a little slowly, distressed, and looked up at the dark cloud. <em>I do not understand—your enemies, who inflict violence after violence against you. Why? Why will you not let me bring them to justice—I have to stop them! I want to! The can’t get away with attacking you! I won’t let them! You don’t deserve violence—they cannot be allowed—</em></p><p>“You still think as a priestess of Enki,” said Nergal.</p><p>That stung. And stung bitterly, because it was not the first time she had received this rebuke, or the second. She bowed her head, hurt and ashamed by the accusation, and a little terrified to be hearing it yet again.</p><p>“I am a God of chaos, not order,” continued Nergal, “The ebb and flow is necessary. Chaos is a part of balance itself. Without it, balance becomes stagnation, in which things can <em>only </em>rot.”</p><p>That was true, and she had heard it before from him. Adiris had been doing this for what had to be many months now, maybe years. Since that first night when against all odds the God of pestilence and mayhem and death himself had answered her call in that cave and stayed his hand, she had heard this explanation many times. Which was shameful, because she should never have <em>needed </em>to hear it more than once. <em>Stupid. </em>He had saved her and her entire flock of followers and given them mercy and a new purpose serving him—still infected, since it would be blasphemy to remove his own work from a mortal, and they were honored to bear it for him—but given the ability to <em>survive </em>the sickness in them, and she had been so happy she had fallen weeping at his feet at such mercy, and <em>still </em>she did things like this. Still she could not even listen well. It was amazing he kept her at all, even as a servant, much less a high priestess. As worthless as she was to him, and as often as she failed so completely, even in things that were easy…</p><p><em>I am trying! I am trying—I do not want to fail. I just—I— …I… </em>These things—the way he understood the world. It was <em>so </em>hard for her. And she was ashamed, and she knew what a failing that was. He had explained her very first night about her purpose, about how she had been fated to reach him, and he had always had plans for her, but also about how things would be now—how his realm worked. About <em>why </em>she was to do what she would do, about balance, and the cycle of life and death, sickness and health, and how much more life shown brightly and valuable in a heart when you were fighting to keep it—how her sickness was a blessing, because the pain of keeping her body alive made her value it fully, and the fear of losing her life made her truly understand its worth. About how chaos worked, and the reasons behind the main ritual she was to perform. It had surprised her <em>so much</em>, when he had explained it. Because the second he had shown her the atrocities the infidels had committed, she had wanted to kill them for him, and send them to the depths of Erṣetu to never return, but he had said no. Said that was not the way his rituals worked. The infidels would be taken to a closed area and try to light beacons, which eventually would open a gateway to a temporary escape from the walled area for performing rituals and let them return briefly to their refuge if they made it out, and she was to try to capture and offer them up to Nergal before they could make it that far. She had been so completely <em>lost </em>at the idea of that reprieve being offered to them at <em>all</em>. Why? Why do it? She had asked him that, and he had said that she was thinking about it all wrong.  Here, between reality and Erṣetu, there was no true death. Not permanently. They were not in the underworld yet, and not on earth—they were on the stairway, in the midst of the seven gates, and here the rules were different. If the infidels were cut down, and chose in pride to refuse to pass on to the next gate, they would come back into this liminal space at the first one again, and again, and again, and again, as many times as they wanted, until finally they would someday break—as all mortals must—and in despair finally go to accept the fate awaiting them in the depths of Erṣetu. It was horrible to her to think <em>anyone</em> could be so set on the insane notion of killing her savior that they would choose to endure even the agony of repeated torture and deaths for it—and Gods, the pride to think you could slay one in the first place? They were infuriating.</p><p>But Nergal had been right—she <em>was </em>thinking like a priestess of Enki to want to simply kill them. That wasn’t how Erṣetu worked, or how he did—it wasn’t how he wanted to work. Nergal was smart, somehow approaching what looked to her like problems and always using them to win even more than he could have without the issue at all. He had made use even of their pride and their desire to murder him, and created this ritual from it. And it <em>was </em>perfect. They were constantly receiving retribution in the rituals for their violence and hate, many offered as sacrifices by her in every single one, and whether they chose to give up and pass on to true death or not, they could not stop from being used as energy for the very God they had wanted so desperately to destroy, and in every ritual, by their own pride they were cut down again and again by a priestess just like the ones they had slain so brutally on their way to Nergal, and <em>that </em>she had loved. It seemed fiercely just to her. Their chance to occasionally escape the ritual completely had been hard for her still though, and she had not liked it, but when he explained it, it had made sense. After all, for any ritual to a God of chaos, by necessity there had to <em>be</em> chance. If it was a ritual of set outcomes and perfect steps, there was order and law, there was no chaos, and Nergal was a God of the realm of chaos—that could never be how his rituals were performed. More than that, though, it was how he wanted them. Because there was no true freedom, and as he had explained, the temporary reprieves only made them fall that much harder the next time they were cut down. If you hit someone again and again and again, they would stop getting back up. If you hit them, and hit them, and missed? Ah, then they would keep swinging, would think they had a chance, and when the fall from the next blow you delivered came, shattering all that pride they had just built? It would send them tumbling twice as far. In the end, there was never <em>really </em>going to be any outcome for them except to renounce their evil and fall on Nergal’s mercy and see if he might accept them (which he had said <em>had </em>happened once or twice, and a few of his servants had once been set against him, but was not something she was likely to ever see in her lifetime, and she had been glad of that, because she had <em>hated </em>the infidels), or to go to their earned suffering and death and to perish. There was only the illusion of it, and the dragging out of their own pain on the way to that inescapable outcome.</p><p><em>Is that what he means now? </em>she wondered desperately, trying to figure out how this was the same. It didn’t <em>seem </em>the same at all—they—the infidels were <em>actively </em>destroying one of his temples! Right now! Yards away! She couldn’t just—just <em>sit by</em>. She had to do something—had to stop them, to drive them off.</p><p><em>I know, I know, but you can’t argue with him, </em>Adiris told herself, upset and struggling to understand, <em>He knows more than you. He’s a God. You can’t possibly think it’s your place to speak.</em></p><p>“They will be punished,” continued Nergal, definitely sensing her feelings tongue bitten or not, from the tone of his voice, “Just not right now. That temple was left unguarded. This time, they are stealing from it. Next time they try, though, perhaps, encouraged by this success, they will find someone waiting. Step into a trap and bring back wounds.”</p><p>She looked up at the dark cloud, trying again to understand the reasoning, and frustrated by her continued failure to do so, and still stubbornly upset by the idea of just letting them get away with blasphemy when she could so <em>easily </em>stop them. Angry at them, angry at her—for having felt things she shouldn’t before seeing them pillage a temple minutes age, for thinking like a priestess of Enki still, for being confused, for being human. It was a rough day.</p><p>“…You. …Truly do not want me to even drive them off?” she asked hopelessly. Really, really trying her best to accept that idea she hated so much.</p><p>“Adiris,” came the voice, somehow reprimanding and soft both at once, “You think too much of law, of rightness as being the same as <em>order</em>. There must be chaos here—you <em>know </em>this. There must be choice. If they cannot pillage with any chance to succeed, they simply become shells. Sit by their fire and rot slowly, they do not break, because they are never moved, neither forwards nor back. Things will be just, like your heart desires, but it is the justice of chaos, not of order. You will have to learn to see that as equal to the justice you were taught. It is my domain. Chaos is a living thing, with power in it. It is a wave, breaking against a beach. It cannot only go forwards. If it did, it would become a wall, unmoving, impassible. It would never be able to shove anyone back against the ground without the ebb you see as failure to give strength to its return against the beach. You <em>will </em>make them suffer for this—in your next ritual. But you are not a wall now that you are mine. You are a wave. They will walk out in the ebb, thinking they have ground to stand on, and you will throw them back that much farther. It is the way of things in Erṣetu.”</p><p>“I am sorry,” said Adiris, her anger abating as that made a lot of sense to her, and sorry she had not been able to find that sense on her own, when she knew he expected so much of her. She so <em>badly </em>wanted not to fail him. <em>But it is all I do. I am so unworthy of being your priestess, no matter how much I try. I wish…</em></p><p>“You make your mistakes out of loyalty,” answered Nergal, “You are a creature of chaos too, who belongs here. You cannot be perfect. If you never ebbed yourself, you would never gain a flow, and would not be fit to be my high priestess.”</p><p>That was probably the most kind and meaningful thing <em>anyone</em> had ever said to Adiris her entire life, let alone her God, and Adiris looked up and stared at the darkness, stunned, and then quickly nodded and bowed her head again.</p><p>“Thank you,” she said, overcome by the thing he had just said, and she bowed low against the floor again, “I am sorry to have wasted your time, my God.”</p><p>There was no audible reply, but a heavy sense of acknowledgement settled on her and then his presence slowly vanished, and she was left alone in the temple, thinking.</p><p>That had been…that had been <em>good </em>somehow. In the midst of the worst day she had had in weeks. It was…unexpectedly encouraging. No. It was. It was hopeful, it was real. She felt gladness blossom in her chest, and relief washed over her, and she straightened up then, feeling happy for once. At peace even.</p><p>She was still frustrated—the idea of leaving these people to ransack a temple—of sitting here <em>watching </em>them do it, that was kind of killing her, but what Nergal had said. About her, about…about the ebb and flow of a person. That was…</p><p><em>Maybe it is okay, then, </em>she told herself, daring to smile for the first time in a long time, just for a moment.</p><p>Gods, the thought was such a relief. She had been <em>so worried </em>for so long, about these doubts she had had, these moments of weakness, but maybe the infidels ransacking the temple wasn’t the answer she had needed to fix that. Maybe it was even okay? Maybe she had to doubt, to become stronger in her resolution once past it. Maybe it had all of it been okay after all. Not proof she was worthless and unworthy, just—just a part of purifying that she didn’t know about, because all of this chaos was so new to her. That was how metal was improved though—it was tempered in fire. Maybe chaos was the same, and it would all be okay—after all, Nergal was a god of fire too.</p><p>Thinking on that, Adiris took a deep, calming breath, and looked back out her window, not sure what she would do since she had been forbidden from killing them, but feeling like she should at least bear witness to the bitter loss of the holy site. They were still at it, out there carrying rolled rugs between them, armloads of other things. <em>Oh. You are scavenging, </em>she realized on a delay, after being surprised at the still intact nature of the building itself after the length of her conversation with Nergal, <em>Not defiling. Scavenging. </em>That was still blasphemous—stealing from a temple—but it was…it was not the <em>same</em>. She watched them for a moment, almost curious. Still a little angry, but much less so than before.</p><p>Ah, and there he was—the boy who had caused her so much trouble. She narrowed her eyes, irritated at him for existing and daring to have similarities to herself that she had had to notice. He was currently directing people just past the temple, then as she watched, he rushed to help carry some planks when one of the others almost lost their grip on an armful. That white shirt of his was so bright it was recognizable from quite the distance. <em>What kind of warrior are you—a king’s son? </em>she wondered, trying to understand again how on earth he was the one leading the pack, when he was clearly so young. She wondered if, like herself, it had been a mantle he’d taken up when the people with experience meant to fulfill that role had been lost.</p><p><em>Back at it again, I see, </em>she chided herself bitterly, realizing what she had basically <em>immediately </em>returned to. <em>You have very little flow, and a lot of ebb, Adiris. </em>She let out an irritated almost growl in her throat. It was so frustrating to be interested in the infidels at all. She didn’t want to be. She didn’t want to know about them, or to care. There was no point anyway—no reason. Nothing had changed! Ransacking, scavenging—such a little difference, and none of that mattered at all, because they were enemies, and murderers, and it was her duty to capture and sacrifice them, and any thoughts of hers beyond that would do nothing at all but make that job more difficult for her to do. And she couldn’t go on like that!</p><p><em>Why do you act this way? </em>she thought at the infidels in irritation, ignoring her own advice and keeping her eyes on the grounds of the tiny temple beside her own, <em>What kind of people can do the things you have done, and then behave the way I am seeing you be now? What can possibly be inside your heads at this moment? How are you cheerful, and organizing, and cooperating like this knowing you will only die again and again—you <strong>must </strong>know by now you will fail to ever destroy Nergal—nothing could have <strong>that </strong>much pride or stupidity—not after it has been so many times so literally beaten out of you. How can you live like this knowing you are existing in a state of punishment for your actions in life? Why are you smiling?</em></p><p>It was infuriating.</p><p>But it was also transfixing, and she kept watching. Watched them come and go for hours, the little girl with good hair leading others in collecting plants—so excited when she found a patch of something so close to the edge of the grounds on the border of Adiris’ temple that she was well in sight and Adiris could see the happiness on her face clearly as she animatedly explained something about it to the older man with grey hair, who looked almost as happy as she did. She heard someone inside the temple start to sing, a woman, and a few others joined her, and whatever the song was, it was joyful, and Adiris had not heard singing in a long time, and it made her feel things she couldn’t even really place, and she could not pull herself away. She just stayed there, through all the scavenging and collecting, watched the stronger people carry out stones, for Gods knew what purpose, watched them carry out glass and metal and wood, watched them talk and congratulate each other, and then finally she watched them leave. And the funniest part of it all was that once they were gone and the temple grounds were still again, it looked so exactly the same. If she had not been watching when they had come, Adiris would never have known they had been there at all. Would not have seen the missing plants some of them had taken, <em>could </em>not see the things missing from the inside the temple, and they had left the exterior unblemished entirely. It made the whole thing feel so utterly insignificant, which only made her more upset that it did not <em>feel </em>insignificant to her at all, and she couldn’t even tell why anymore. She was so frustrated by the entire event once it was over that she just leaned over the windowsill on her arms and stayed like that, broodily looking out at the outside world and the little temple long after they were gone. So long that she was still watching close to an hour later when one of them came back.</p><p>At the unexpected sight, she had turned her attention back in full to the temple grounds. And she had been surprised—not because an infidel had come back to the temple so soon, but because one <em>single</em> infidel had come back, and he was alone<em>. </em>Alone, and talking to himself—she could tell even from quite a distance. Heading for the temple again, hands in his pockets. It was not the leader—not the boy who caused her so much trouble. It wasn’t one of the ones she had noticed much at all, but she recognized him just the same—she had reached a point she could recognize them all now. He was one of the youngest boys. Brown curly hair, pale skin, and sunken bruising under his eyes like he never slept—a white tree emblazoned on his shirt, doubtless the symbol of whatever country he served and worn out of his loyalty to it, although she’d never seen a matching emblem on any of the others. Perhaps it was because he had been a messenger once, she had thought the last time she had wondered why, or a speaker.</p><p><em>Why have you returned alone, </em>she wondered, sitting up a little, interested in spite of herself, <em>And who are you speaking to? </em>She lost sight of him as he got close enough to the temple on the far side of it from her that the little stone building blocked her view, and he did not reappear on either side of it, until after about two minutes of time had passed, Adiris decided that meant he must have stayed inside it. <em>What is this, then? </em>she wondered, leaning farther forward on the ledge of the window, like that might let her see right through the stone walls. It was…well, she guessed really it was no more remarkable or strange than anything else that had happened today, and yet she’d…she’d had a strange feeling. About the boy. <em>Who were you talking to? </em>A very strange feeling.</p><p>An impulse settled on her, and she hung in indecision for a moment. <em>I have been forbidden to chase them off. </em>She could satisfy a little curiosity though, couldn’t she? With no harm done. The ebb and flow, wasn’t it? It wasn’t a very lawful decision to be making, but maybe that was a good thing to…<em>maybe… </em>she thought wish a lot less conviction. <em>Maybe. </em>And she hung in indecision again, wishing for a sign, afraid to do something wrong and not trusting her own judgement at all.</p><p>And then movement in the distance in her periphery caught her eye and she turned to look and saw another unexpected arrival at the edge of the woods, returning just like the first boy had, for some reason she could not guess at all, to the temple he had just ransacked, <em>alone</em>.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>“Alright, great haul everybody,” said Dwight, stretching to try and un-tense sore muscles, but not even caring. Various people called back happy signs of assent, and he smiled, taking in the scene before him. God, this was all fucking fantastic work, and it had even happened at a good time of day for them! Golden-gap, probably all of them trial-free for another couple hours even, and with their pillaging exploits finished, which meant time left over to cook and relax and start making a table, and setting up the church pew bits they’d gotten, and get to organizing stuff. It had been one <em>hell </em>of a haul.</p><p>Even now, with people barely back five minutes, camp looked fundamentally different. There were four tall candlesticks up, casting light around the edges of camp. David, Tapp, Jeff, Jane, Kate, and Jake had hauled two separate chunks of broken church pews back, and were talking over the logistics of going back tomorrow to get a third that had been buried pretty well under fallen chunks of the ceiling. One of the pieces they’d gotten was about long enough to seat three people comfortably, the other more like two—well, after just a little work to make them level in the legs and add new arm rests on the snapped sides, all of which was easily accomplishable with their tools and wood supply, according to Jake. It was like <em>actually </em>having <em>furniture </em>here. Furniture. And blankets! Or at least close enough! Plus, Claudette had brought back whole stacks of plants and was still gushing to Adam and Laurie about what could be done with them. Not to mention the bits of metal, glass, and various other scraps they’d snagged that would be good for weapons, or small repairs to things like toolboxes that needed some soldering work to be solid again.</p><p>“Kind of amazing, huh?” asked Ace, coming to stand by him for a second and grinning.</p><p>“Yeah. And if luck holds, this is only the first day of this layout for realms—we might get as much as <em>two weeks </em>access to the Chapel!” said Dwight happily, smiling back, “We’ll probably run out of stuff to scrap eventually, but that’s at least good plant access for Claudette for that long, and I’m sure we could get more for a while.”</p><p>“Yeah,” said Ace, watching the others happily and then stretching himself after a second and giving Dwight a sheepish look, “Guess I better actually go help with something again now, though.”</p><p>“Yeah, me too,” agreed Dwight, trying to figure out where he’d be most helpful. Probably not food prep or making the table or wood working, but he could definitely help organize the finds. It’d—<em>wait. </em>He looked over the group, brow furrowing, counting. <em>Jane, Feng, Nea, Kate, Meg—shit—is— </em>No, he was right. He moved quickly over to where Claudette was, since that was the last known whereabouts as far as he knew, and tapped her on the shoulder.</p><p>“-if you boil it—” she paused in the middle of her animated sentence about whatever the kind of chubby plant stalk she was holding was, and looked over at him, still beaming, “Yeah?”</p><p>“Where’s Quentin?” asked Dwight.</p><p>“Oh—He asked me to save him some work to do when he got back,” said Claudette, “I’m sorry—I was supposed to tell you—I got,” she tripped over herself, suddenly flustered and gestured at the plant haul, “—the—I was talking about them—I meant to. He put up a bunch of stuff really fast, then said he needed to run and do something.”</p><p>“Run—where?” asked Dwight.</p><p>Claudette looked past him at the rest of camp and then looked confused when she didn’t see Quentin. “Oh. I—he didn’t say. I thought he meant help someone with something over there. I guess maybe he…forgot something at the Chapel?”</p><p>
  <em>At the Chapel…</em>
</p><p>“I’m sorry,” said Claudette, looking worried now, “I should have asked—I wasn’t paying attention—I’ll come help you look.”</p><p>“No-no,” said Dwight reassuringly, giving her a smile, “You didn’t do anything wrong. I think I know where he is. Go ahead and keep doing what you’re doing. I’m just gonna run back to the Chapel real quick and walk back with him whenever he’s done—I know it probably doesn’t matter, just, even in an abandoned killer area that should be totally safe, or the woods even, usually best not to go alone.”</p><p>“Are you sure?” asked Claudette, still concerned, “I really don’t mind coming, or going for you.”</p><p>“Totally,” assured Dwight, not really worried anymore now he had a good idea what was up, “We just might be gone a little bit.”</p><p>“Oh. Okay,” said Claudette unsurely, searching his face for signs something was wrong and she should argue and come with him. When she didn’t find any because there genuinely were none to be found, she went back to sorting things and talking Laurie and Adam through their finds more, but cast him one lest <em>Are you sure? </em>look with big eyes, still looking sorry. Dwight did his best to give her a duly reassuring smile and a <em>It’s really no big deal </em>wave of his hand, then a thumbs-up before he turned and headed back into the woods.</p><p>It wasn’t a big deal. Probably Quentin would be totally fine alone, too, and he didn’t need to go either, but just in case—I mean, the area was about as safe as it ever could have been, but since it <em>was </em>the Clown’s area, probably <em>someone </em>should be there too, as backup. Still, he wasn’t really worried. If Quentin had vanished back to the Chapel alone to do something and told Claudette only vaguely where he was going, and not at all what he was going to do, Dwight had a pretty good idea of where and how he was gonna find him.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>It wasn’t a long walk back to the Chapel, but Dwight went a pretty medium pace, not in much of a hurry. Part of him considered just leaving Quentin alone once he was about halfway there, because it was almost nice and peaceful out in the woods solo for once—which was maybe a feeling Dwight personally had <em>never </em>had before, but even with that oddly okay quiet in the air, he kept going just the same out of that unkillable sense of anxiety that always lived somewhere in his gut, even on a good day. …Maybe he was going for another reason too—something a little like curiosity, or plain compulsion.</p><p>When he saw the chapel yard laid out before him in complete silence, devoid of any sign of life, he thought maybe he actually knew why, and it hadn’t really been curiosity or impulse at all. It was beautiful out here, in a way. Like ruins were beautiful. And it had been a long, long time since he’d walked up to any sight in the terrain of the world he was living in and thought that. Peaceful too, like it wasn’t what it was—a deathtrap—a place he’d been killed many, many times. <em>Or, well, not <span class="u">here</span>. Never been killed <span class="u">here</span>. But. In a version of you, </em>he thought at the waiting building. But he guessed that wasn’t the old building’s fault at all—not either version of it, and anyway, it really <em>was </em>peaceful now. Empty. Except for Quentin in there somewhere.</p><p>Dwight started forward quietly through the grass, watching the stained-glass above him getting slowly closer as he went. The only sound was the almost imperceptible padding of his own footfalls. When he made it to the entryway at the base of the building, he didn’t see Quentin immediately, and that kind of startled him, but he took another two steps in and then he did. A little bit of fallen debris from the partially-caved high ceiling above had been blocking his view originally, but the guy was at the far end of the big open room, kneeling. Eyes shut.</p><p><em>Praying, </em>thought Dwight, which was what he’d expected. Quentin and Feng were the only members of the group that were religious, as far as he knew—well, maybe Kate? As far as he <em>knew</em>-knew. Made sense he’d want to come do this alone.</p><p><em>Probably I should go wait outside, </em>Dwight told himself, hesitating where he was, struck a little by the sight and the huge, empty building. Near silence. But he could hear Quentin’s voice—too quiet to make out words, but, he was talking out loud up there. <em>What must that feel like? </em>he wondered. Still believing in something like that in a place like this. It would have to take guts, or, something. He wondered if it was actually reassuring, like it was supposed to be, or if he just constantly felt…just. Utterly abandoned. <em>That’s…probably not something I can or should ask him…</em></p><p>It did weigh, though. Being here.</p><p>Dwight looked up at the cavernous ceiling above them, the strange imitation of a chandelier the Entity seemed to have carved itself out of twisted metals. The sight just made him sad.</p><p>God. He was so tired of feeling so utterly <em>powerless </em>here. Today should have made him feel better—it had, until just now, but.</p><p><em>How are we <strong>ever </strong>gonna get out of here, </em>he thought hopelessly, eyes still fixed on the big black nothing above him, <em>I’ve been promising these people since the day I met them that we could, but I have no idea what I’m doing. I just keep hoping for a miracle. What kind of leader does that? I should be able to find something—to do something—make progress, find <strong>any </strong>little bit of hope that’s real. But I’m lucky we’ve made it as far as we have, and I <strong>don’t </strong>know what I’m doing. I never have. I’ve just been trying my hardest, and fighting, and struggling to survive, and keep my head above water, and keep everybody else from seeing how close we all are to drowning, how far we still are from even seeing the shore. What am I supposed to do? It’s so overwhelming, and so hopeless, and I’m not giving up—I wouldn’t, but. God, what am I supposed to do?</em></p><p>He sensed eyes on him, and looked down then, and saw Quentin had finally noticed he was there. His friend had paused what he’d been doing and was glancing back over his shoulder. <em>Probably wondering if I need him for something. </em></p><p>Dwight shook his head at him, and Quentin glanced away again for a second, then back when he heard footfalls as Dwight started to walk. Not even really sure why he was doing it, except maybe out of a sense of hopelessness, Dwight walked all the way to the far end of the room, glanced at Quentin, and then went about as far to the left as he could before being blocked by debris, trying to give his friend room to keep talking quietly without being heard, then knelt himself and closed his eyes.</p><p>“…You okay?”</p><p>Quentin’s voice, with some genuine but not judging concern in it. Dwight glanced up and over at him and shrugged. “Are you?”</p><p>Quentin looked ahead at nothing for a few seconds, and then smiled a little and shook his head, then glanced back at Dwight, still wearing that just a little sad kind of Quentin smile that was so familiar to Dwight. “Not especially bad today actually, but, in general?”</p><p>Dwight smiled back. “Yeah.”</p><p>Quentin gave him another nod in some kind of solidarity that Dwight didn’t think either of them entirely understood, but was very genuine and very appreciated just the same, and then didn’t ask him anything else, just left him alone to do whatever he’d come to do without any prodding, and went back to shutting his eyes and speaking in undertones on his side of the room.</p><p><em>What <span class="u">am</span> I here to do? </em>wondered Dwight, looking up at the ceiling and the stained glass again. He exhaled slowly, thinking, and mentally gauging distance and making sure he was picking a tone Quentin wouldn’t be able to hear from where he was, then clasped his hands.</p><p>“Hey,” he said barely audible to the window above him, “It’s me. Probably you don’t know who that is. I’m not exactly a regular, no matter who I’m talking to—if there’s even anybody on the other side at all.” For some reason that made him feel incredibly sad to say, and he wasn’t sure why. The insignificance? The unsurety that there was <em>anything </em>out there with even the power to help them at all, even <em>if</em> it cared? <em>God, at this point, who knows. Existing is just sad. All the time. </em>He took another breath and tried again.</p><p>“Dwight Fairfield,” said Dwight quietly. He paused and studied the faint moonlight in the colored glass again, and then kept going. “That’s me. I’m gonna be honest. I don’t know if I believe there’s anything out there at all. I’ve never seen anything that made me think there was—at least not that made me think there was anything <em>nice. </em>And I got no idea who I’m praying to.” He smiled sadly to himself, looking at nothing. “Anything, I guess. Anything good that would listen. Fuck, I’d take anything <em>ambivalent</em> that would listen and maybe help. I don’t know if there’s a higher power. Or powers. I guess there’s…monsters, anyway, that are real. Demons. Or something. I don’t know about gods. I don’t know about much at all anymore—” He almost laughed, feeling bitterly sad somehow at the thought saying that had prompted. “That implies I ever did, though. Which uh, we both know isn’t true. …I don’t know what I’m doing.” He looked up at the ceiling again, searching, no idea for what, but for something. Hope, maybe. “Here, or in general.” He smiled a little. “At least I’m consistent.”</p><p>Dwight paused again and took a breath, thinking hard.</p><p>“Okay, look,” he said, glancing up at the ceiling again, “I don’t know if there’s anything out there. I don’t even know if I <em>think </em>there is. But if there is. If there is any kind of God, or power, or collective unconscious, or <em>anything </em>at all. Please. I know you…you don’t <em>get</em> anything out of helping me, if you even exist—it’s not like I’m some loyal follower if you’re a God, and if I’m addressing the collective unconscious, or the energy of the universe, then I’m just…one tiny fucking speck in all this mess. But please.” He shut his eyes for a second and took a deep breath, then let it out slowly, shakily almost. This felt strange. In a way he really hadn’t expected it too. “I guess I haven’t ever really prayed before,” he informed the ceiling, trying to smile at it, “But I’m here,” he added hopelessly, feeling his heart sink a little at the complete void, the complete <em>nothing </em>answering him back. “I’m here on my knees, trying, because I don’t know what to do. I don’t. I know I’m…I’m not the best person, I know it, and I’m trying, I <em>really </em>am, but I’m still not. I’ve got a group of people here though, that you wouldn’t believe.”</p><p>He smiled at that a little, still feeling the hopeless, empty feeling seep into him, but meaning that, and feeling the truth of that statement too.</p><p>“They’re incredible, every single one of them,” he promised the darkness in the roof at the edge of his vision, “They’re good people, and they trust me, and I promised them I’d get them home, so <em>please. </em>Please, if there’s <em>any </em>way you can help me, please, do it. I know I’m not the best, but I’m trying, I really am, and I love these people, and I just want them to get to go home—I really do.”</p><p>God, it was so silent in that chapel. So empty. Somehow the silence and emptiness didn’t make him feel like there was nothing out there in the world at all, though, it just made him feel like there was something vague, and detached, and cold, and it heard him, but it wouldn’t listen. That he just wasn’t worth caring about. He wondered if the silence of nothing would have felt better than the way he was imagining this emptiness to be, or if that would have just been a different kind of even worse. Either way, it hurt. He didn’t know what he’d expected, but it hurt.</p><p>“Please,” he whispered again, so quietly this time even he barely heard it. He looked down at the hands he’d clasped for no real reason other than mimicking Quentin in his assumption the other guy had a better idea of how to appeal to Gods or the universe at large for help and tightened his grip. “I know I’m probably really insignificant to you, if you’re even real,” he continued quietly, eyes still fixed on his hands, “But I would care.” He looked up at the ceiling hopelessly, feeling like crying a little, because of how lonely this felt, and how much more awful than he’d expected. He’d expected it would just feel like nothing, but it didn’t. It felt like asking someone not to kill him had, his first couple weeks here—like his first trial ever, begging the Wraith to at least tell him why it was killing him. He’d never gotten an answer to any of those please either.</p><p>“I would,” said Dwight again, going on anyway, even though it hurt, “I’m not a great person, but even so, if I was God, or one of them, and somebody like me was praying something like this, I’d care. God, I’d have <em>so much power, </em>I’d care about anybody trying. I would answer. I would do something.” And he meant that, too. He wasn’t perfect, and he was still working on improving the faults he knew he had, but he wasn’t a monster. He wasn’t uncaring, or cold, or heartless, or above everyone else. He was like them. “If I was just a tiny fragment of the collective unconscious, or the energy of the universe, I’d care too—I don’t know what I could do, but I’d try, if I knew someone needed it. So just. God, if somebody like me would care enough to do something, and there is <em>anything </em>out there worth believing in at all, you <em>have </em>to, right?” He looked up at the ceiling again, at the place light dissolved into darkness, and swallowed, then looked back down slowly at his hands again. “You’d have to help us. You couldn’t not.” <em>So, </em>he finished in his head, feeling tired and sad and alone again, <em>Either you’re not good, or you’re not real, because you won’t. </em>Jesus, how did Quentin believe in <em>any </em>of this anymore?</p><p>He glanced over, and saw his friend still had his eyes shut. Instead of hopeless, though, he looked a little <em>more </em>okay than usual, lips moving silently, eyes shut, almost smiling a little.</p><p><em>I guess that’s good, </em>thought Dwight, smiling a little too, <em>If it brings you some kind of peace, I’m glad you stuck with it. God, you’re <span class="u">way</span> stronger than I am—I’d have been like ‘fuck that’ the first week here, even if I <span class="u">had</span> subscribed to a religion. </em>He was glad though, a little, seeing it—seeing Quentin almost <em>happy, </em>for once. Whatever was real, other people were for sure, and some of them were pretty great. Maybe together someday that’d be enough. Even if there was nothing else out there to answer.</p><p>“Seriously, though,” he whispered under his breath, eyes still on Quentin, “If there’s anything out there in the whole fucking universe that gives a shit, please help us. And if you’re his God and you’re real and you leave him to all this shit anyway, I swear, I’m gonna find some way to bash your skull in with my own two puny human fists for betraying my best friend like that when he stayed so loyal. That’s too fucked up to live with. So just, please. Please, if there’s anything out there that gives a damn, and you’re just a picky bastard who doesn’t want to do it for <em>me</em>; there’s a lot of people here better than me, and please, please at least do it for them. We really need h-“</p><p>There was a sound behind him. Like. <em>Fire? </em>Faint, a small crackle, like a—a torch? He was smelling something too. <em>Is that <span class="u">incense</span>? </em>He felt his eyes go wide. <em>Fuck, if there’s a <strong><span class="u">tangible</span></strong> answer to prayer just appeared behind me, I am both thrilled and extremely terrified, and I would like to formally apologize for the more crass things I’ve said in the last four seconds. </em>Wait, there was another smell too, one he—</p><p>Dwight turned to look and felt his body lock up in horror as he took in the seven-foot-tall figure towering over him and Quentin from maybe four feet back, golden headdress glistening in the firelight cast by the lantern-like flames constantly burning in the heart of the sharp and studded metal incense burner she used like a flail.</p><p>
  <em>Oh my God.</em>
</p><p>The Plague. Here, and real, and she saw him see her, and he had <em>never </em>been more terrified of her in his life.</p><p>
  <em>IFuckingTakeItBackYouPieceOfShit!IShouldHaveKnownGodWouldBeASadisticMotherfucker!WhatTheFuckWhatTheFuckWhatTheFuck—</em>
</p><p>“QUENTIN, RUN!” he shouted at the top of his lungs, breaking through the ice that had flooded his veins at the sight of her, finding motion himself and scrambling back and up in the same breath as he did.</p><p>He saw Quentin turn to look and then shoot to his feet too in bullet-time, but the Plague was coming for them fast—sparked to movement with his voice in the same instant they had been, and she called out something commanding and terrifying in a language he didn’t know, but he wasn’t looking anymore by then. There were two exist from the building on this end—a window on his side, a doorway on Quentin’s—far, but they could make it—she couldn’t chase them both—what the <em>fuck </em>was she doing here? I-it didn’t make sense! Why! <em>Why </em>would the Plague come here? It wasn’t her realm! It—fuck—he hadn’t known killers even <em>could </em>cross realm borders—it hadn’t even occurred to him till just now that if they couldn’t normally, that rule might be null and void if the area was empty—b-but even if so, <em>why? </em></p><p>Fuck, there wasn’t time to wonder, time to care—they’d all had the impression since getting here that if you died outside a trial, it would take—it would be different, be final, and Laurie had said a long time ago someone <em>had </em>died out here, and even if that was like only 85% confirmation, Dwight didn’t want to be the last 15%! He was scrambling, going for the window as fast as he could—<em>shit, Quentin—</em>he cursed himself internally—he hadn’t even looked to see which one of them she was chasing, but he did then, slowed down for a second, and saw she’d come after him. She was coming fast—not running, exactly, but moving with ungodly speed in a power walk—even faster than he’d remembered her in trials. No way she would catch him before the window, though, it was close, and he’d had too much of a lead. She might be able to hit him with the incense burner and wound him with it during the jump, but she wouldn’t be able to grab him. <em>But, fuck! We’ll have to circle the whole building to make it back to our border—right now we’re on the side she came from! What if she cuts us off before we can circle back to the border? What then?? ‘</em>Then’ was gonna have be figured out when he got there because there wasn’t time to—</p><p>A sudden pain hit him in the legs, and Dwight went down onto his stomach with a cry and no idea what had just happened. His head hit the stone floor of the church with a <em>CRACK, </em>and his ears were ringing for a second as he lay there, stunned. Unsteadily, he tried to stand up again, to push himself up, but his legs wouldn’t move—he thought he heard Quentin shouting something, but he couldn’t make it out through the ringing in his ears. Something jerked him by the ankles then, and he felt a sharp pain dig into his right calf, and he was being dragged backwards then. He cried out and tried to grab onto something and stop himself, but there was nothing <em>to </em>grab, nothing but stone floor, so he flipped over instead, trying to see what was going on, and saw the incense burner and its chain wrapped around his feet at the ankle, one of the sharp prongs digging into his right leg. The Plague was pulling him towards her, reeling him back with her weapon, and seeing that, he tried in a panic to use his arms to pull against her, slow her down at least, but it was so fucking futile, and he was almost at her feet already, and then suddenly Quentin was there beside him, and then in front of him, half-blocking his view of the towering monster woman in the golden robes.</p><p>“Wait—Wait, please!” shouted Quentin, arms out to his side like he could block her from going past him to Dwight, and hands up in a universal gesture of ‘Please don’t attack me—I don’t want a fight,’  desperately trying to appeal to the humanity of this inhuman thing, “Please don’t kill us! It’s not a trial—you don’t have to do this! Please! If you kill us here, we won’t come back!”</p><p>“Quentin—” tried Dwight desperately. He’d been meaning to tell him to run or something, but the rest of the words didn’t come out—he didn’t have enough breath for them with the wind knocked out of him, and he had to struggle down a lungful of air before getting enough back to get out a second word at all, “Don’t!”</p><p>Quentin glanced at him for a millisecond before refocusing on the Plague, but made no move to go.</p><p>The towering woman covered in boils and puss and gold looked down on them, but made no move, just studying them intently. <em>…Wait. </em>She should have brained Quentin with her makeshift mace four seconds ago—or—well, since she couldn’t do that with it stuck around Dwight’s legs, then grabbed him at least, or slashed him with her claw-rings, or puked on him or something. And she hadn’t. <em>Oh my God. Is she. …Actually…<span class="u">listening</span> to him?</em></p><p>Another two seconds of that awful tense readied movement went past, and she still hadn’t killed them yet. Or vomited on them, which he was really, really dreading, because an OD of that illness was one of the worst possible deaths here. So. That was pretty inexplicable, but it was really something.</p><p>“Please,” tried Dwight, holding his hands up cautiously too, looking at what he could see of the Plague past Quentin, “We don’t want trouble. Please, just let us go.”</p><p>The woman glanced at him when he spoke, but he could read nothing on her face. After a moment, she glanced back at Quentin. And then spoke.</p><p>“Attunu tenīnā. Nasḫuru tapârrâ?” Her voice was deep, and booming—commanding—terrifying. And just hearing a killer speak <em>to </em>them period was like getting hit by a train.</p><p>Even from the Plague, who was the only killer that ever spoke period (well, aside from the Nightmare, but no one counted his uh…interactions with them—he’d never been like the other killers anyway), <em>even</em> from her, this was unheard of. Sure, she spoke <em>in</em> trials, but never <em>to </em>them—to the Entity, Dwight was pretty sure, and mostly just when she killed them herself, but that was <em>it</em>. No killer ever talked to them. <em>Ever. </em>But she was <em>definitely </em>talking to him and Quentin now, and he had no even remote idea <em>at all </em>what she’d said, and he could tell Quentin didn’t either, which he felt like was probably <em>really bad news </em>for them right now.</p><p>The Plague took in the confused panic on their faces and her eyes narrowed a little.</p><p>“Attunu nasḫuru tapârrâ!” she said more loudly, commanding, and Dwight flinched at the sound of it. He wasn’t even sure if that was a command, or a question.</p><p>“I-I’m sorry,” he said quickly, praying she would at least recognize their confusion, “We don’t speak your language. I don’t know what you’re asking us to do.”</p><p>Quentin looked back at him, then her, and nodded, looking about how Dwight felt, and she looked from one to the other. “We don’t know what you’re saying,” tried Quentin, “We uh—” he touched his lips, pointed at her quickly, and shook his head apologetically.</p><p>
  <em>Oh please work, please work, please work.</em>
</p><p>The Plague eyed him, then Dwight, and then glanced back at Quentin and without warning, her hand shot out and caught him by the shoulder, and she shoved him down with force, and he fell to his knees with a startled cry.</p><p>“No!” shouted Dwight, dragging himself up as much as he could with his legs still twisted in her chain, and making it more or less to his knees painfully too, trying to reach Quentin and shield him or something, “Please! We just don’t understand you!” he called desperately, looking up at the towering woman. He could smell her this close—even over the incense—smell the rot in her skin, and see the puss leaking from boils on her arms and face, all the awful decay from the disease rotting away her skin, and he tried not to gag on it. <em>Oh please don’t kill him, please don’t kill him. </em>“Quentin, run,” he pleaded.</p><p>At his side, Quentin had stayed on his knees where he’d fallen, and he was tense and breathing a little bit raggedly, but he made no move to run at the words, just looked over at Dwight and otherwise kept rigidly still. “And what?” he asked desperately, “Leave you with her to die? Alone <em>and </em>pissed off now?”</p><p>“Please—please,” begged Dwight, “At least if she really starts to hurt you—”</p><p>The Plague was beside them then suddenly, stooping, and Dwight jerked back a little in anticipation of being grabbed or hit, but she wasn’t going for him—she was still going for Quentin, and she took his shoulders and shoved them down again, so he was bent forward over his knees and his head was against the stone floor, and Dwight saw him tense and shut his eyes, anticipating a blow, or death by having his head crushed against it, but she let go once he was down and just stayed there crouched over him, watching.</p><p>“Kī annû,” said the woman to Quentin’s bent form.</p><p>“What’s happening?” asked Quentin very quietly, holding perfectly still.</p><p>“I-I don’t know,” said Dwight, “Nothing—she’s just looking at you.”</p><p>After a few seconds of nothing happening, Quentin started very slowly to rise up a little, but the second he moved, she immediately shoved him down again.</p><p>“Lā! Kī annû,” commanded the woman.</p><p>“Okay. Okay,” said Quentin appeasingly, keeping his head down and raising one of his palms just a little at the wrist, “I will stay down.”</p><p>The Plague watched him intently for a moment. and Quentin stayed perfectly still, just breathing. Dwight had <em>never </em>been this close to the killer before—well—not in any way that had let him actually <em>look. </em>When he was slung over her shoulder, being dragged to a hook, there were usually a couple other things on his mind. But she was less than a foot away now, holding close to perfectly still, and it was kind of overwhelming.</p><p><em>God, I always knew you were sick, but. </em>It was like she didn’t even have <em>skin</em> anymore. One of her hands was near him, gripping the end of the chain he still had wrapped around his feet, and he could see her fingers up close like that, beneath the bright gold talon-like ring things she wore over them, and they were <em>raw. </em>All over her body, her legs, her arms, her chest—even her neck and half of her face. She had skin so cracked and raw the epidermis layer was just <em>gone </em>and she had raw red tissue in its place all over, and the places on her body that <em>did </em>still have skin-skin at all were cracked and lined with blisters, dripping puss, just rotting off her. It made him want to throw up just to look at it. God, her face. She—she had this huge gold headdress, and Dwight wasn’t short, but he wasn’t anywhere close to seven+ feet tall like she was, so he could never see her head that well usually, but like this, on a level with her, he could see past the chains hanging from her crown thing, and the skin rot had gone up her neck and <em>consumed </em>the entire left side of her face. The ear was just <em>gone, </em>green-black deterioration in its place, and so was her eyebrow, the left half of her lips. Even this close, he couldn’t see past the sagging skin and discoloration and plague growth enough to tell if she even still had the eye down there somewhere at all.</p><p><em>What do you want with us? </em>he wondered, watching her and Quentin with worry, trying to plan out in his head his next step. Untangling his feet would probably be suicide, but there might be something he could grab—he was close enough he could bash her in the head with a rock if he had one. <em>God damn it, I don’t have one, though. </em>There were bits of debris all over, but he didn’t see anything close enough to grab subtly. <em>Shit. </em>What did she want? She hadn’t killed them yet, but she definitely hadn’t been wanting to let them just go, so-? A-and what was with her and Quentin? Why? He’d been afraid she was going to stomp on his head or something when she pushed him down there, but she was just watching him now, and it had been like twenty seconds. Was it just a power thing? A ‘get down and bow, let me make sure you know just how much more powerful I am than you’ kind of gross show of force? Honestly, that would be pretty great for them, because if that <em>was</em> it, and they did what she said, she’d probably let them go after having some fun freaking them out for a couple minutes. <em>Please let that be what this is.</em></p><p>The monster woman looked over at him then, and Dwight felt his heart skip a beat.</p><p>She held his gaze for a long moment, which was incredibly unnerving—especially because he couldn’t pin down <em>at all </em>what exactly kind of a look she was giving him—and then gestured at Quentin with her free hand.</p><p>“Tâmāru?” she asked him, and he was taken aback, because the tone <em>wasn’t </em>super commanding like everything else she’d said. It had sounded like a normal question.</p><p>“Uhhh,” said Dwight, slowly starting to nervously shake his head, “I don’t—”</p><p>“Tâmāru,” she echoed, making a two-fingered gesture at her eyes, then at Quentin, and then pointing to Dwight.</p><p>“Do I—? Uh—yeah, I, I see,” he said carefully, nodding a little and mimicking the two-fingered what could only possibly have been a ‘<em>look’ </em>gesture.</p><p>“Atta tenēnu,” she asked him slowly, gesturing towards Quentin as she did, voice low and scarily commanding somehow even when clearly asking a question, “Anna?”</p><p>“Uhh,” <em>fuck, fuck, fuck. </em>He looked panickily from Quentin to her and back.</p><p>Seeing the blind, terrified confusion on his face, she looked almost exasperated for a second—which was actually kind of reassuring, because it was the most human emotion Dwight had ever seen on her—and then clasped her hands together in front of herself for a moment and bowed her head, while still looking at him over the hands. “Enēnu?”</p><p>“Oh!” said Dwight, getting it and overwhelmingly relived, “Yes! Uh. I think,” he added, feeling the relief seep out a little. <em>Shit, is yes the good or bad answer? </em>He nodded anyway and mimicked the gesture. “Praying. Right? En-een-u?”</p><p>The Plague inclined her head once in answer, face back to completely unreadable. <em>Well that didn’t go horrible at least.</em></p><p>“What is happening?” asked Quentin quietly from the floor.</p><p>“Uhhh she’s asking something about praying, but I have no idea what,” said Dwight, eyes on the Plague. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Quentin get an indescribable look on his face.</p><p>“Attunu nasḫuru tapârâ?” asked the Plague very carefully, voice firm, gesturing with a finger at both of them, clasping her hands for a moment, and then pointing at Quentin.</p><p>Dwight swallowed. Seeing the look on his face, the gigantic rotting woman reached over and closed her gold-clawed fingers over his shoulders, then pushed him down against the floor and pressed his head against it like she’d done to Quentin, and he heard her say “Nashuru?” again while he tried to keep himself from having a heart attack.</p><p>He stayed there, kind of afraid moving at all might provoke sudden death, but after only about three seconds he felt her fingers beneath his shoulders again, and she lifted him back up onto his arms and left him there while he looked up at her and tried to stop shaking. <em>I don’t understand what you want, </em>thought Dwight desperately, looking into the one pale eye he could see beneath the gold headdress, in the little part of her face that hadn’t rotted away. She had to want something, or she would have just killed them, right? But what?—Because apparently it wasn’t just stay on the ground and pray.</p><p>“Attunu nasḫuru tapârâ?” said the Plague again, very slowly, looking down at him, and then Quentin, then back at him again. She was waiting for an answer, and he knew it, but he still didn’t even have an educated guess what the question had meant.</p><p>“Quentin I think that’s a yes or no question, and I think she wants me to say yes,” said Dwight quickly, keeping his eyes on the Plague, “But that’s a gut instinct and what if I say yes and she kills us—any thoughts?”</p><p>“Uhhh,” came Quentin’s reply from the floor, “I mean. I don’t know—I can’t see her. Or anything. But you have to say something, right? Why do you think she wants you to say yes? How do you know it’s yes or no?”</p><p>“Because she wouldn’t understand anything I say more complicated than yes or no, so that’s what I’d ask me,” said Dwight, “And I think she expects to understand the answer.”</p><p>“Okay, solid—why the rest of it?” said Quentin.</p><p>The Plague glanced from him to Quentin almost curiously, watching them talk.</p><p>“Uhhh—I don’t…know. I… She said it almost like she was asking for confirmation, instead of with no idea about the answer at all? And a double-check sounds like the kind of question you’d ask if you want and expect a ‘yes’ from someone,” offered Dwight slowly.</p><p>Quentin thought about that for a second. “Okay, yeah, you’re right—she did kind of sound like that to me too. You have <em>any</em> idea what ‘nas-hchuru’ means?”</p><p>“She shoved me on the floor like you when she said it,” answered Dwight.</p><p>“Okay,” said Quentin, “…the other thing she asked you was about praying?”</p><p>“Yeah,” said Dwight.</p><p>“Some people pray like this,” suggested Quentin hesitantly, “Like she made me sit. Do you—”</p><p>“—Wait, you think she’s pissed cause she saw us in here praying and we were doing our form wrong?” asked Dwight, thoroughly taken aback.</p><p>“What? No,” said Quentin, “Why would-? –I just thought maybe the words are connected.”</p><p>“Oh. Yeah, that makes more sense,” said Dwight, “Sorry—I’m. Strung out on adrenaline and fear. Not really thinking my best.”</p><p>“Yeah, no, I get it,” agreed Quentin, “Uh. You’re doing better than me.”</p><p>“Suktā!” ordered the Plague, holding up a hand. They both shut up immediately.</p><p>The towering woman looked from Dwight to Quentin, and then let out a breath. After a moment of consideration, she reached over and lifted Quentin back up onto his knees and then surveyed them both. She made a hand-clasping, bowed-head motion, and then looked over at them, and the boys exchanged glances, and then Quentin nodded and mimicked her. Dwight watched him and then turned back to the Plague and nodded too.</p><p>She considered them for another moment, studying their faces with the eye she still had narrowed, and then deciding on something, her expression changed and she placed her palm on her heart and lowered her head a little, looking for just an instant almost sorrowful—which was so insane to see on a killer’s face <em>period</em> that Dwight was lucky to catch the word she said with it at all past his thoughts launching into warp speed at the sight.</p><p>“Attunu tâdarrakā,” said the Plague glancing up at them with the sorry expression still on her face. “Attunu tenēnâ,” she continued, losing the expression and making a praying gesture, “Aššum attunu,” she pointed at them, “tâdarrakā,” she finished, hand back on her chest, eyes closed for a millisecond, back  to that ‘almost looking full of woe’ expression for just a moment before she dropped it and looked back at them expectantly.</p><p>“…Are. Is she asking if we were sad?” asked Quentin, sounding as astounded as Dwight felt.</p><p>“…Or hurt? Maybe?” suggested Dwight tentatively, still kind of in shock, “…This is so surreal. Is she fucking with us, do you think?”</p><p>“I don’t know,” said Quentin guardedly. He was keeping his eyes on the Plague, “I’ve never seen a killer even talk to someone before. –Well…”</p><p>“—Yeah, a normal killer,” agreed Dwight, not wanting him to finish that sentence any more than Quentin did.</p><p>“I can’t figure out what she wants,” said Quentin. The Plague was still just watching them expectantly. Not friendly, not aggressive, just waiting. <em>Waiting for what?</em></p><p>“Me either,” agreed Dwight quietly. He looked down at his calf. It was bleeding through the pantleg where the prong on her incense burner was still lodged, and starting to leak on the floor. Quentin and the Plague both followed his glance.</p><p>
  <em>Well. I can’t run. Best case scenario if this comes to a fight, one of us gets the drop on her, and I try to help Quentin keep her on the ground with my legs still tangled up. That’s…not great odds for us. Especially if she starts puking. One of us gets vomited on, without a pool of devotion to cleanse in, I have no idea what happens. I…I guess we. Just get sick and…die. Really, <strong>really </strong>fast, and horribly. And the odds of us <strong>not</strong> getting vomited on, even if by some miracle we win? …Yeah. So. Fuck. So that’s…like <strong>maybe </strong>a 2% chance of survival even if we win. That’s last, <strong>last </strong>resort. If we want <strong>any </strong>real chance at making it out of this alive, we <strong>have</strong> to try to talk our way out of it, and somehow, so far, that’s actually going like <span class="u">waaaay</span> better than it should. We made it this far alive. We have to try. We stand <strong>some</strong> kind of chance, at least.</em>
</p><p>Dwight took a breath and looked back up at the Plague. She was still studying him with that same fixed gaze she’d had since finishing her question. The Plague had <em>always</em> struck him as an imposing figure, but somehow never more than she did right now, right here, crouched on the floor of the chapel and waiting for his answer.</p><p>“I don’t…really understand,” said Dwight slowly, trying as hard as he could to convey things like ‘uncertainty’ in his tone of voice, no better idea how to try and communicate with her, “What you’re saying, or what you want. But. Yes, I. I think.” He nodded then, and ducked his head and put his hand on his chest and let himself look sad for a second, then glanced back up at her.</p><p>The Plague watched, then looked at Quentin, who gave a nod and did the same thing Dwight had.</p><p>She smiled.</p><p>Dwight stared at that in shock and horror, because it was so unexpected that he had no other idea how to begin to feel about it.</p><p>“Ṭābu,” said the Plague, sounding pleased. She straightened up then and was suddenly <em>towering </em>over the two of them, and proclaimed, “Anāku āgammālukunūti,” with the booming, commanding voice she had, and made a ‘<em>Come here’ </em>or ‘<em>Get up’ </em>motion with her hand.</p><p>“What just happened?” asked Quentin, which had been exactly what Dwight had been about to say.</p><p>“I don’t know, but I think it was good,” offered Dwight hopefully.</p><p>Quentin started to follow the Plague’s instruction to get up, but he glanced at Dwight and hesitated instead, then moved cautiously closer to him on the floor and paused with his hand just above the chain around his legs to look up at the Plague. “Uh, can I-?” he asked. She gave him a nod.</p><p>Massively relieved, Dwight tried to get the chains unwrapped while Quentin got the incense burner prong out of his leg. “Is it bad?” he asked nervously through gritted teeth, not really wanting to look for himself.</p><p>“No,” assured Quentin, and he didn’t think he was lying, “It’s a little bit of a deep puncture, but it’s just in the muscle, and it’s clean. Walking might hurt for a bit, but it should heal up just fine.”</p><p>“Thank God,” said Dwight, smiling at his friend as he got his feet free.</p><p>Quentin smiled back and started wrapping a bandage around his calf with the small roll of gauze that he (and all of them) tried to keep in a pocket at all times in case of being unexpectedly pulled into a trial. “So…Uh. …Is she actually letting us <em>go</em>?”</p><p>“Yeah, I think so,” said Dwight, glancing up at the Plague, who was still just standing there, and appeared to be waiting patiently now. “I don’t see why else she would let you get me free, and she seemed to like our answer to whatever she said.”</p><p>“Why, do you think?” asked Quentin curiously, sneaking a look at the Plague himself, “I’ve never seen one of them act like this.”</p><p>“Me either,” agreed Dwight. He was genuinely curious too now that his fear of impending death had abated a little. “Maybe she’s…not all bad. We don’t really know why they do what they do. Maybe she has to do trials, or whatever that disease is that’s killing her will start making limbs fall off.”</p><p>Quentin grimaced.</p><p>“I mean, not that that makes it okay, but. I wonder. I’ve always kind of thought the—the Hag. She looks like she’s dying, you know?” Dwight added, “I’ve wondered if maybe she’s so starved she doesn’t even think anymore. Just tries to eat anything that moves, so she doesn’t die. I know starvation does real damage to your brain. I’ve wondered sometimes if maybe she <em>can’t </em>think.”</p><p>“Yeah,” said Quentin slowly, “I never thought about that, but. The Nurse seems almost like she’s trying to help me, when she chokes me to death—and I know—I <em>know </em>that’s an insane thing to say,” he added hurriedly, like Dwight would give him shit for the thought, “But. She’s weird about it—gentle, almost—which I shouldn’t be able to say about somebody choking me to death. But. I— I-It’s like she thinks she’s putting me out of my misery. …I guess that’s only speculation though. I have no <em>actual</em> idea if any of them have…I don’t know. <em>Any </em>reason, at all, for what they do. I mostly always thought they didn’t, but…” He seemed to decide against saying whatever he’d been thinking, and tied the bandage off.</p><p>“…The Wraith hesitated, once. After that trial a long time ago we told people about,” said Dwight. He almost felt like he shouldn’t, but. <em>I wish it had been the first time. The first trial I had. </em>Seemed like if someone was ever going to hesitate, it would have been for the kind of begging he’d done then. It hadn’t been, but it <em>had </em>happened. And it had happened to Dwight twice. At least, it sort of had. He hadn’t known what was going on at all the first time, or what to call it, and the two times it had happened to him had been <em>so</em> far apart. So far apart…And anyway, that was a while ago now, and he’d hoped back when it had happened the second time that maybe it would continue, but the Wraith had been back to his usual self by the next trial they’d seen him in. And never faltered again once. Not for anything Dwight had tried or begged. He’d just been a monster again, in every possible way. Maybe he’d never get to know why there had been a time he hadn’t been.</p><p>Quentin watched him for a second, and then thought, then offered very quietly, “…He hesitated once for me too.”</p><p>“Really?” asked Dwight, stunned, “W. After the—? When?”</p><p>“Couple months ago,” said Quentin.</p><p>“And you didn’t—” started Dwight.</p><p>His friend shrugged and smiled at him kind of sadly, then stood and offered him a hand. “It didn’t last. I have no idea <em>why </em>he did it. And it was just the one time. Never again.”</p><p><em>Huh. …So. <span class="u">Exactly</span> like it was for me, then. I know now’s not the time, but that is…something to think about. I want to hear the rest of his once. </em>Dwight took the hand and made it back to his feet, then gave the Plague a tentatively hopeful glance.</p><p>“Alkānim,” said the Plague, again motioning a <em>come here </em>gesture.</p><p>“Uh,” said Dwight, shifting to face her properly, “C-can we—” the ‘<em>go?’ </em>he’d been going to say turned into a sucked in breath and muffled sound of pain as he tried to take a step and put weight on the wounded leg for the first time and almost went down.</p><p>“-Shit—are you okay?” asked Quentin worriedly, reaching out to catch him and help him stay up, and then hesitating to finish the motion when Dwight caught himself, but keeping his arms close in case he lost his balance again, “Is it bad?”</p><p>“No—no, just. It’s more painful than I thought. It’s not so bad until I put weight on it,” answered Dwight, who was really dreading the thought of putting any weight on it again and grimacing at his bloodied pant leg, “But, you said muscle—that makes sense.”</p><p>“Can you walk?” asked Quentin, “I could carry you—or help you.”</p><p>“Help actually sounds great,” said Dwight, relieved. He could <em>probably </em>walk on this, or run on it if he was forced to, but it would not be <em>easy,</em> and it would hurt like hell. <em>Oh God. Trials are going to be fucking unbearable for a couple weeks, aren’t they? Well that fucking figures. This would be my luck.</em></p><p>“Atta namḫuṣūtum?” asked the Plague, tilting her head a little and watching her with that one bright clear eye he could see past the headdress. She glanced at his leg and back at him.</p><p>“Uh—I don’t know if you’re asking me if it hurts, or if I can walk on it,” said Dwight, “But I think I—” Just in case, he tried to put weight on it again and winced and sucked in a breath and took his weight back off it. <em>Ow. </em>He glanced back at Quentin. “Yeah, I’ll take help.”</p><p>He sensed movement and felt a hand on his shoulder and looked back to see the Plague.</p><p>“Uhm. W—” he started to ask nervously, and then she bent at the knees and picked him up, “AH!” For a second his mind went blank and that was all it was offering him, and then cognitive thought came back a little as the white-hot ingrained terror at being picked up unexpectedly by a killer ebbed enough for something else to exist too, but by then he was already in her arms and she’d turned and started walking. “Wait!” tried Dwight frantically. <em>Why didn’t she sling me over her shoulder. What the fuck is happening.</em></p><p>The Plague glanced down at him and cocked her head, but didn’t stop.</p><p>“What are you doing?” Quentin’s voice. Dwight was pretty sure Quentin had shouted something he’d missed too, back when she picked him up, and he sounded about as worried as Dwight <em>felt</em>. He darted in front of the Plague and put his arms up and out like someone trying to stop a charging horse and looked up at her frantically, and the Plague did stop then, to give Quentin a puzzled look.</p><p>“Alkam,” she said like <em>what are you doing?</em>, then pointed from him, to the exit out the back of the temple past him she’d started to head for before, gave a <em>‘Come on,’ </em>gesture with her hand at the wrist to not lose her hold on Dwight, and kept walking, just stepping easily around the small person blocking her path. Dwight saw Quentin consider actually trying to stop her, but instead he hurried to keep pace beside them and looked up at Dwight.</p><p>“What do I do?” asked Quentin worriedly, “I mean, are you okay? Is she just trying to help because you can’t walk easily? I-I’m kind of freaking out—I mean, she’s super calm and not acting hostile right now at all, but it’s so weird—<em>Every</em> impulse I’ve got is just <em>so much </em>not for trusting a killer.”</p><p>“Yeah, uh,” said Dwight, still playing mental catch-up himself. He looked up at the Plague. She had to be really fucking strong, because she was holding him bride style against her chest and not even breathing heavy. She sensed eyes on her and glanced down at him for a moment, a hard to place but not exactly <em>hostile </em>look on her face, before refocusing on her destination. Dwight turned back to Quentin, feeling his heartrate begin calming back down. “I. …I think it’s okay? I think she’s just helping.”</p><p>“Then why are we going out the back?” asked Quentin.</p><p>That was true—Dwight hadn’t really registered it, but they were going out the wrong side, and they were pretty much at the entryway now. Still—it <em>had </em>been the closest exit, so maybe she would just—</p><p>The Plague stepped out into the Chapel yard, turned a little bit <em>left, </em>and kept walking straight. Right towards the towering gold tips of the ancient temple Dwight could see past the rapidly upcoming tree line. <em>Oh no.</em></p><p>“Dwight—she’s not taking you back to the campfire,” came Quentin’s voice, taut with readied action and rapidly building stress.</p><p>Dwight heard him, but he kept staring forward, trying to think. <em>Fuck. Okay. Why? Why would she take me back there? </em>It could not <em>possibly </em>be for something good. <em>It—I could fight. Might be able to elbow her in the face and get free. <strong>Could </strong>I run on the leg though? Fast enough to even have a shot?</em></p><p>He was…kind of afraid he knew the answer.</p><p>“Quentin,” said Dwight carefully, eyes on the tree line, “I don’t think I can stop her. I don’t think I can run. … I don’t know what to do.” <em>You’re not supposed to say that. You <strong>always </strong>have to know what to do. It’s your job—it’s the one thing people depend on you for. </em>But fuck, he didn’t, and he was pretty sure no matter what he or Quentin tried, he was going across that tree line at the horizon and into the Plague’s temple, and he was afraid of that. The spires at the top of the temple sparkled in the moonlight like weapons, and the shape felt so looming and imposing, he was sure he would be swallowed up in its shadow forever.</p><p>“Y…You have to <em>try,</em>” pleaded Quentin, struggling to keep exact pace with the Plague with his much shorter legs, “I could carry you!”</p><p>“Not fast enough,” said Dwight, and that was <em>definitely</em> true. <em>Fuck. Fuck! I…Okay, okay. What <strong>can </strong>you still do?  </em>“Quentin, if she gets me over the border, don’t follow. Don’t let her use me as collateral, okay? Run for the campfire and don’t look back. I need you to do that.”</p><p>Quentin gave him a frantic, horrified look, and then darted out in front of the Plague again and grabbed her arm. “Wait! Please!”</p><p>“Don’t make her mad!” pleaded Dwight, somehow simultaneously worried and annoyed he was being completely ignored, and also kind of relieved that Quentin <em>was </em>ignoring him and refusing to abandon him, because he was <em>truly </em>afraid of going across that tree line towards that looming, waiting shape.</p><p>The Plague stopped and looked down at Quentin in surprise as he latched on, since tugging on her arm was making it harder to hold Dwight.</p><p>“Mīnum?” asked the towering woman, giving Quentin her attention and a look like she had no idea what was wrong with him.</p><p>“Please,” said Quentin, letting go of her and taking a step back directly into her path so she could see him better while still blocking her way. “We don’t want to go there,” he continued, pointing to himself and Dwight, then the tower past the woods, and shaking his head at her. “We want to go home. To the campfire,” he tried, pointing to himself and Dwight again, and then in the opposite direction—towards the campfire, and nodding.</p><p>The Plague glanced over her shoulder. They were <em>way </em>too far from camp for the fire to be visible, but there was this very faint suggestion of light in the air back there, above where Dwight knew the fire was, and he thought the Plague knew it too, from the look on her face as she studied it before turning back to Quentin.</p><p>“Please,” added Dwight, not very hopeful this plan would work, but feeling that anything was worth a shot. The huge rotting woman looked down at him and the smell was overwhelming. How the <em>fuck </em>was she still alive? He had been working really hard to sit in a way that kept his skin from touching hers, desperately grateful he had pants and long sleeves, but he was still <em>so</em> close to the skin on her chest that looked a second from sloughing off the way the skin on her arms had, and it was nauseating.</p><p><em>Your hair’s gone. </em>He’d never noticed that one before—somehow he’d always thought she had kind of long black hair. <em>Well, not gone-gone. </em>Technically, he had been right, and she did have long-ish black hair, but it was almost missing. Just chunks and tufts left along her mostly bald head. <em>God. </em>It was both physically repulsive in that pre-programmed fear way humans had that made them <em>really </em>not want to catch someone else’s disease, and somehow also painfully sympathetic, seeing that. Even when he knew she was a killer. The infection creeping up her skull looked so unbearably awful to endure.</p><p>“We want to go home,” finished Dwight as he broke himself from that train of thought, and he copied Quentin’s gestures.</p><p>“Anāku ašraris ul allak,” said the Plague, turning half towards the far woods and campfire so she could angle her wrist and point at it without dropping Dwight, then pointing to herself and shaking her head.</p><p>
  <em>Wow, for the first time, I actually…have a guess what something you said means.</em>
</p><p>“Nīnu pānnātum ašaris niakkāšu-ma,” said the Plague slowly, gesturing with her wrist as she did to point to them and herself, then the temple, and then she held up one finger and paused for a second before continuing, “u ištu pīqat nitar.” She put a lot of stress on whatever “ištu pīqat” meant and as she spoke, she gestured at the three of them again, then to the campfire, and held up two fingers this time, although the way she was looking at Dwight and had said the second half of that sentence felt a <em>lot </em>more like a <em>maybeee </em>than a statement of fact.</p><p>“I…I think she said. She can’t, or, won’t, go to the campfire? And then that she wants us to go,” started Quentin slowly.</p><p>“-to the temple,” said Dwight with him, nodding, and Quentin stopped and let him finish it, “and then I think she said she’ll think about letting us go after.”</p><p>“Why the fuck would she say that, though?” said Quentin, more in insulted disbelief than like he thought Dwight was wrong, “That’s shady as fuck.”</p><p>“She knows I can’t get away,” said Dwight tiredly.</p><p>“Then why not just be a full asshole about it?” said Quentin, “Why the ‘maybe’? She didn’t sound like she was making fun of us.”</p><p>That was actually a pretty good point.</p><p>The Plague was watching their rapid back and forth with scrutiny.</p><p>“Please,” tried Quentin again, appealing to the Plague, “You don’t have to do this. Please, just let him go.”</p><p>She seemed kind of confused by the emotion of his reaction and tilted her head a little, brows furrowed.</p><p>Pretty desperate now, Quentin looked up at Dwight, and he could tell how scared he was, which was kind of funny. Not enjoyable funny, but unexpected funny, and it made him feel bad, because he knew Quentin was afraid <em>for</em> him<em>, </em>and there was nothing he could do to make things turn out much better than they were probably going to. <em>‘Probably going to’? </em>He hadn’t thought much yet about what that was going to mean. What the Plague could <em>possibly </em>want to take him to the temple for. It had kind of occurred to him on impulse when she’d started heading for the spires that maybe they’d accidentally agreed to be human sacrifices when they’d tried to talk to her, and then he’d just stopped, because if thought one was gonna be that grim, he wasn’t super curious to find out what other things his imagination was ready to throw at him were waiting beneath it. <em>I’m not very scared yet. Why am I not scared?</em></p><p>“She’s not listening. What do you want me to do?” asked Quentin, looking to him for direction, since that was supposed to be his job, “Fight—now? I can!”</p><p><em>Oh. Right. Because Quentin’s here. And he’s looking to me to tell how bad this is and know what to do, and if I’m really scared, there’s no way he won’t try to kill her to save me, and we’ll both die. </em>That actually made him feel a lot better, somehow. Sad, but a lot better.</p><p>“Don’t,” said Dwight, “You don’t have a weapon, and she’s even worse to fight than the rest of them. Even if we won somehow, all she has to do before then is infect one of us, and we’re dead in under an hour no matter what we try, and we might kill the others just trying to go back close enough to say goodbye.”</p><p>Quentin stared at him, horrified and worried and so tense with adrenaline he wasn’t sure how to use that he looked about ready to snap, and he shook his head. “I can’t leave you. We won’t give up.”</p><p>“We don’t know she wants to kill us,” said Dwight, trying to look and sound a lot surer than he felt, “She’s being pretty lenient so far. Just let her take me, and let the others know what’s going on.”</p><p>That got him the most disbelieving <em>are you fucking out of your mind </em>look he’d ever seen on Quentin’s face.</p><p>The Plague seemed to have gotten tired of waiting for them finish whatever conversation they were having, and started to move forward again, and Quentin shot out in front of her, and Dwight felt his heart lurch as this time annoyance flashed across her face at the sight, edging towards anger, and then to Dwight’s, and he was pretty sure the Plague’s, surprise, Quentin dropped to his knees in front of her.</p><p>“Please!” tried Quentin again, looking up at her desperately from where he was at her feet. He shook his head. “Don’t.” After a second, he gestured past her with an open palm, towards the campfire. “Let us go home.”</p><p>For a moment, the Plague gave him a hard look, and then something seemed to dawn on her. She glanced over her shoulder at the campfire, then back at Quentin and the look on his face, then at Dwight, and then she stooped and to his absolute shock set him on the ground.</p><p>
  <em>Oh my God. Is she actually—? Did we—?</em>
</p><p>“Sūnu īnēnū,” she asked carefully, making the head-bowed, hands-clasped motion she had before for praying, and glancing back at the woods towards the campfire. “Īdrakū?”</p><p>“I.” Quentin looked at Dwight for help, not sure what she meant, but Dwight wasn’t either.</p><p>
  <em>That could be “Do you want to go back? Are you begging to go back?” or asking if we’re praying <strong>for</strong> them? I…</em>
</p><p>The Plague seemed to take the lack of a “No” as a very definite “Yes” to whatever she’d said to Quentin, and her expression softened a little.</p><p>It was so weird to see that. Sure Dwight had definitely seen vaguely human emotions on her face before, if in the last few minutes pretty much exclusively, but the way she was looking at Quentin <em>now</em>? It was…almost <em>sympathetic</em>, or something. He had <em>never </em>seen a killer look like that. It was almost enough to make him hope they were wrong about all of this, and something totally different and <em>not </em>horrible was going on.</p><p>The decaying seven-plus foot tall woman reached one of her hands with its sharp gold talon-like rings out toward Quentin’s face, and he flinched automatically, but held still, and she gently cupped his cheek. He shuddered on contact and shut his eyes, which is probably what Dwight would have done too, but Dwight wasn’t really watching that—he couldn’t take his eyes off the Plague. She looked. …Almost… Maybe not <em>sad, </em>but. <em>Sorry</em> for him. <strong><em>Are</em></strong><em> you…? </em>thought Dwight, feeling like an idiot for really considering that option with a killer, but no idea what else to interpret that look <em>as. …Do you <strong>not</strong> want to hurt us? What the fuck happened in that chapel? If it’s not to kill us, then why would you want to take us back to your temple?</em></p><p>“Atta tadmiq,” she said softly, like a reassurance, holding his face gently. After a second, Quentin opened his eyes and looked up into her face—Dwight was pretty sure looking for some kind of sign that she really meant any of this shit that felt <em>so painfully </em>like a promise <em>not </em>to do something awful to them. He hadn’t thought about it before, but it struck him suddenly, watching the exchange, that Quentin had just let her touch his skin. <em>God, please don’t let him get sick. </em></p><p>They didn’t know exactly how whatever disease she had was passed, but if you touched someone or something that had been vomited on like <em>at all </em>in a trial, no matter how careful to avoid the puke itself you thought you were being, you <em>would </em>get sick, and in minutes—seconds if it was a really bad trial. He was really hoping maybe it was a vomit-exclusive thing, but for all they knew, it could end up being contact <em>period, </em>or even airborne… That was a horrifying thought. God, Quentin was brave. Definitely braver than him. Dwight couldn’t even imagine what the touch of that rotted hand must feel like on his face, and he was again simultaneously very grateful and very guilty that Quentin was still here with him.</p><p>“u attunu tapānām,” she finished in the same tone, holding Quentin’s gaze and looking sympathetic at the hopelessness there, which was <em>so </em>hard to really understand, and then she let go of his face and turned and went to pick Dwight up again.</p><p>He thought about fighting that, saw <em>Quentin </em>thinking about fighting that too, but he quickly held up a hand and said, “It’s okay—don’t stop her.”</p><p>“Why?” asked Quentin nervously, watching her lift him up again, and then hurrying to his own feet as an afterthought, “Do you have a plan?”</p><p>“Yes,” said Dwight, “Let her take me.”</p><p>“No-!” started Quentin immediately.</p><p>“—I know,” said Dwight, cutting him off, “But I don’t think she’s going to kill me.”</p><p>Quentin gave him a worried <em>Please continue </em>look.</p><p>“She let you bandage my leg, and I don’t think she was faking being sort of…I don’t know. Understanding, just now. I think she wants something, but not to kill us,” said Dwight, who was uhhhh, maybe feeling this at 60% for <em>real</em>, if he tried, but working not to let that show. “It’ll be okay. Just let her take me, run back to camp, and let people know where I am. If something happens, I’ll scream for help. If someone’s in here by the border, I’m sure they’ll hear me.”</p><p>They were getting close to the edge of the Plague’s realm. It was only about ten feet and closing now.</p><p>This time, Quentin didn’t answer him. Dwight tried to see his face to have a guess what he was thinking, but all he could tell what that he was thinking <em>very </em>hard and <em>very </em>fast in silence as he kept pace beside them. They were there then, and the Plague stepped over the border into her own home, and then turned to glance at Quentin when he hesitated on the other side.</p><p>“Alkam,” said the Plague, motioning for him to come with her head.</p><p>“Don’t,” said Dwight, “I’ll be okay.”</p><p>That was probably a lie, and he was terrified of the thought of being carried wounded into the Plague’s temple alone, but even if he wasn’t the world’s bravest person, he sure as hell wasn’t so shitty he was about to drag his best friend in and get him killed or whatever <em>too</em>. So he tried. He made himself smile at Quentin, attempting with everything that he had to look sure, and reassuring, so he would be believed.</p><p>“No,” said Quentin with no room for argument, looking up and holding his gaze, “No way. I’m not going to let her take you alone.”</p><p>“You can’t—” started Dwight.</p><p>“—I know I probably can’t beat her if something happens,” said Quentin firmly, “But I’m not letting whatever happens to you if it’s bad happen alone. I’m fucking coming.”</p><p><em>Shit, </em>thought Dwight, both distressed by and appreciating that so goddamn much, and incredibly guilty <em>about </em>appreciating that so goddamn much. “But no one knows where we are!” tried Dwight, fighting Quentin’s decision just the same, “They’ll panic. Who knows what they’ll do, or what happens if they come looking for us. Claudette knows we went to the Chapel, and when we don’t come back, and they come looking, and there’s nothing but a little blood on the floor, it’s going to be bad. They might just run off into all the bordering realms to look for us and get killed by someone!”</p><p>“…You’re right,” said Quentin after an agitated three seconds of thought, and Dwight felt massively relieved for his best friend and very scared to be going with the Plague alone now, but only for about 0.3 seconds, because then Quentin looked up at him and held out a hand. “Give me your notebook. I’ll leave a note.”</p><p>“I don’t have it,” lied Dwight as convincingly as he could.</p><p>“Y-w—Yes you do! It’s in your fucking pocket!” shot back Quentin, “I saw you using it to take notes on the finds today and I can fucking see the outline from here! Your pen is sticking out of the top! Give it to me, or I’m gonna take it!”</p><p><em>Damn it. </em>Very reluctantly, Dwight took the little pocket notebook out of his breast pocket and handed it over. The Plague watched as Quentin took it, held up an apologetic <em>Hang on a second </em>hand towards her, and then hurriedly scrawled something on one of the pages. When he was done, he looked around, snagged a tall and fairly sturdy stick, and rammed it into the ground hard so it stayed upright, then used some thread to tie the note very securely to it. He studied the stake for a second, then pulled off his beanie and hung it from the top of the stick.</p><p>“There,” he said determinedly, turning back to Dwight, “No one will miss that.”</p><p>He was right, but…</p><p>“…Quentin,” tried Dwight quietly after a second, “You don’t have to do this. I know you want to-”</p><p>“—I’m not gonna change my mind,” said Quentin, stepping over the border to join them and managing to smiling up reassuringly at him over the anxiety they were both <em>definitely </em>feeling, “I know you just want me to be safe, but no matter what you say, I’m coming. Okay? You tried, but I’m not gonna change my mind. We’re in it together.”</p><p>He definitely meant that, and it was in general kind of impossible to stop Quentin when his mind was set.</p><p>“Thank you,” said Dwight quietly, feeling kind of sick with relief to not be abandoned as the Plague gave Quentin a nod as he rejoined them, then turned and began to walk again, “I shouldn’t fucking <em>say</em> that—I should keep trying to get you to—”</p><p>“—It’s okay,” said Quentin, and Dwight glanced down at him, and he was still smiling, but it was a little bit more of a real smile this time. “We’re gonna be okay, right? There’s two of us, and we’re pretty smart. We’re a good team. We’ll just…figure whatever happens out.”</p><p>“Yeah,” promised Dwight, smiling back and feeling just the smallest bit better for real. <em>…God, I really hope so.</em></p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Thank you for reading! This is going up in three parts, but back to back today, so it's already completed. I really hope you enjoy it. This was my first time doing a deep-dive into Adiris as a character, and I thoroughly enjoyed it.</p><p>Research notes:<br/>While neither Enki nor Nergal is ever named in Dead by Daylight, Adiris’ add-ons include several religious objects that reference both the God of Water and Creation, whom she served in Babylon, and the God of Pestilence and Mayhem, who she serves in the realm and feels a fierce devotion towards, and those items bear images which match historical representations of Enki, (God of, among other things, water and creation, and who has a goat as one of his symbols), and Nergal, the ancient Mesopotamian God of war, pestilence, sickness, and death, to name a few. This means that canonically, the Entity is lying to Adiris about who it is, in order to get her to serve it—which, considering it is extremely powerful and saved her life, probably wasn’t super hard to do. But is really sad for her.<br/>In Adiris' backstory, it mentions that as her last desperate attempt to save herself and her survivors, she banished herself and them from Babylon and walked through the wilderness of Urashtu. This is a /wildly/ incomplete version of what is the most buckwild balls to the wall story I've ever heard. You see, in ancient Mesopotamian religion, their underworld (Kur in Babylonian, Erṣetu in Akkadian), was thought to have a physical gateway located somewhere in the Zagros Mountains. These mountains span parts of modern day Iraq, Iran, Syria, and Turkey. And Adiris-day Urashtu. This girl was really trying to walk to the literal, physical gates of hell to knock and ask the Gods of the underworld to please not end her people right now. Incredible. I can’t put into quite accurate perspective just /how/ ballsy and /absolutely/ insane this is, unless you’re familiar already with Mesopotamian religion. But TLDR suffice it to say that if I could pick /any/ religion’s underworld to go to? It would /not be that one/. Like I would /readily/ take my chances letting Anubis weigh my heart against a feather than go to Kur. It’s not a good place. And I have so much respect and also concern for Adiris she genuinely tried to do this shit. Girl /literally/ did everything humanly possible to save her people and herself. It’s insane.</p><p>Also! I have a translation list compiled for all the Akkadian spoken by Adiris in-fic, and if you want to read it, it's linked to here: https://ziracona.tumblr.com/post/629727623261683712/akkadian-translation-key-for-from-the-earth-of-no  --- It is under a read more, and the place where each chapter starts and stops is marked clearly to help avoid spoilers and find what you need. It's not necessary to read this, because this fic was written to be understood as-is, and Adiris translates any dialogue you need to know either internally in English alongside the spoken Akkadian, or through motions that are pretty clear, but if you just want to know extra for fun, here's the translation key!</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. The Medic</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Adiris takes the two foreigners she captured back to the temple to make sure they are sincere, and things unfold about as far from as planned as possible.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <em>I can’t believe this is happening.</em>
</p><p>Adiris was doing her best to remain aloof and formal and professional, as was her duty, but she was <em>excited. </em>She would never have expected a thing like this at all! It hadn’t been planned—she had only ever been going over to the little temple out of curiosity—forbade from stopping them and driving them off, she’d only wanted to see—only actually intended to observe unseen from a distance at all. But then there they’d been, kneeling on the floor, praying.</p><p>Praying, she was sure, for forgiveness.</p><p><em>He said that sometimes this has happened, </em>she thought, heart pounding a little and trying hard to keep her expression completely neutral and not show it at all, <em>That infidels have come to regret and chosen to become his instead.</em></p><p>She had been right! She had been distressed, and agonizing, but she had done nothing wrong! She had been noticing changes and redeeming qualities in these infidels because they had <em>been </em>there, and this was proof! In fact, she was fairly certain the exhausted boy had said a few seconds ago that there were others back at the campfire who wanted to repent too, and he hadn’t wanted to leave them behind—there might be <em>many </em>more, even!</p><p>
  <em>Okay, okay. But take it a step at a time. You must be certain. You must stay calm, and distant, and do this right. If they think you are easy to influence, they might try to manipulate you. You have to make sure it is for real.</em>
</p><p>The language barrier was going to be a bit of a problem, and had been <em>already, </em>but surely Nergal could do something about that once she told him. Should she do that now?</p><p><em>No, </em>decided Adiris, reaching the edge of the patch of forest that were between her temple and the border to the realm with the little temple, and stepping out into the open space beyond the small woods with its fruit trees. It always felt very right to be here, with her people in the familiar little clearing at the foot of her own beautiful temple, and it reassured her now. <em>No, not yet—I want to do this right for Nergal. I will make sure this is what it seems to be first.</em> That seemed right.</p><p>“What the fuck.”</p><p>The words had been whispered by the one walking beside her, the small medic, and like everything the two boys had been saying, it was in a tongue she’d never heard before them, but his <em>tone </em>sounded astounded, and when she glanced over, he’d stopped walking and was just gaping at the temple before them.</p><p>“There’s…no way,” said the boy in her arms, she could only assume in answer to whatever his friend had said, but he wasn’t looking at the medic; he was <em>also</em> gaping at the scene ahead.</p><p><em>I suppose it is quite impressive, </em>thought Adiris, pausing for a moment herself to take the sight in, <em>They have seen most of it before, though. </em>The temple was a little different in rituals—a little smaller, but similar. The changes to the temple itself were mostly on the inside and underground, though; the only real difference externally was that the tents for her people were not up around it in rituals, and the campfires fires and little paths between their homes they had made were always gone as well. At first she thought that was what they were staring at—the little camp itself, but then she realized it wasn’t; they were gaping at the <em>people</em>.</p><p>“Alkam,” she told the boy who had stopped, motioning a <em>‘Come on’ </em>with her head to help him understand, and he glanced up at her with wide eyes, and hesitated, but looked at his leader and then did so.  He was looking almost ashy now though. <em>Did you not know, </em>she wondered, shifting her grip on the injured young man so she was holding him up with one arm, like she would have a child, since now it would only be a short walk to her destination, and placing the other hand on the younger boy’s back to direct him and keep him walking now that he seemed so overwhelmed by the people around him. The young medic kind of jumped and looked back at her when she did it, but then accepted the direction and kept walking. Both boys looked so stunned though, as she steered them deftly through the center of the little camp that parted for her immediately while gaping at the two infidels with almost as much surprise and astoundment as the boys were looking back at them with. <em>Did you think all of the other people serving Nergal were dead? </em></p><p>“What is this?” asked the medic, tone hushed and stunned as he gave a worried look up towards his leader, “Th. Th-there’s so many of them. What on… God… It’s like fifty people.”</p><p>“I don’t know,” whispered back the leader, who had gone rigid in her grip from the second they’d stepped out in front of the camp, and was now so quiet and still he was barely breathing. He turned his head to scan the crowd around them, stunned and dismayed. “There’s <em>so </em>many. I think there’s more of them than us. …Are all of them…dying?”</p><p>“They’re sick,” answered the younger one uncertainly, scanning faces nervously as they went past, and body language compact and tensed like he was afraid one might reach out and grab him, “Like she is—the same kind of sick. Same plague, it must be.”</p><p>“Why?” said the leader with something between wonder and horror, “Why are they here. What the <em>fuck</em> is this? I. I-I don’t… I can’t even begin to guess why it would…”</p><p>“… They all look like they’re about to die…like any moment they might just…” The younger one’s face had gone ashen. “…God, the suffering they must be… Every. God, <em>every </em>second must…”</p><p>The leader looked back at him and opened his mouth to answer whatever he’d said, then closed it again and just shook his head like he didn’t even know what to say. Adiris could only guess what either had said at all, but they both stopped after that and became very quiet.</p><p>“Adiris,” asked Erishti, one of the older women, very hesitantly as she passed, “…is everything alright?”</p><p>Adiris kept walking, but she glanced over her shoulder at the Erishti and the rest of her followers, knowing they must all be wondering the same thing. “Do not worry,” she assured, “There is nothing to be concerned by. These two may be joining us here. They are of the other group, but they are repentant. I am taking them before Nergal to make sure they are sincere.”</p><p>Everyone one in the temple yard exchanged glances, silently trying to gauge what the others thought of that kind of almost <em>unbelievably</em> unexpected news.</p><p>“There is no need to worry,” assured Adiris again, pausing at the base of the temple steps to actually turn and look back at them for real for a moment, “It will all be done rightly.”</p><p>Her congregation accepted the statement and nodded or bowed to her, and Adiris turned and went deeper into the temple, still guiding the young medic with a palm against his back. They entered the main room and crossed the netted floor and the golden inlaid center of the chamber, and Adiris changed direction towards the entrance to the stone stairway leading down, and the younger boy hesitated the second he realized where she was directing him and glanced nervously at his leader for direction, but when she gave him a little push to prod him into moving again, he did, and they descended together into the underbelly of the temple.</p><p>“Where are we going?”</p><p><em>Oh—one of you was talking to <span class="u">me</span> this time. </em>It had been the leader, the boy she was carrying, who’d spoken, and when she glanced down at him, he seemed nervous, and he looked questioningly from her to all of the underbelly of the temple he could see ahead of them, and back.</p><p><em>I will have to find a better way to speak with them, </em>thought Adiris, leaving his question unanswered because it seemed pointless. She could only guess what he’d asked her period, and even if she guessed right, she couldn’t gesture while carrying him, and he would have no idea at all what she said without that. Besides, they were almost there—she could work on communicating in a minute. Adiris turned a corner and paused in front of the ornate and thick iron bars blocking entrance to the center room of the temple underbelly and the alter waiting there, then set the boy down.</p><p>“Here. You okay?” She heard the medic speaking quietly, going to help his leader to his feet as she went past them and knelt, then retrieved her key from the pendant she wore around her neck like a dagger kept in a sheath and inserted it into a lock at the base of the door. For a moment, she channeled her energy into the key, and it hummed with power as the lock clicked for her and the bars came free at the base. Sliding the key back into its sheath in her necklace with one hand, Adiris used the other to raise the barred gate up towards the ceiling until it had retracted its full length and locked in place, leaving an entryway into the chamber.</p><p>“Yeah. I’m fine,” answered the leader behind her, just as quiet, and when she turned, they were both on their feet—the medic with one of the leader’s arms slung over his shoulder and his own arm around the older boy to help keep him steady, both of them watching her with a fairly sizable degree of fear and dread.</p><p><em>I wonder if you think this is a trick, </em>thought Adiris, taking that expression in. They had asked for this, more or less, and at first seemed happy to go, so she hadn’t thought it would scare them this badly, but perhaps it only made sense they would not be certain she wasn’t lying to them. –After all, this was…unusual, to say the least. To be offered clemency and redemption for the kinds of crimes and blasphemies <em>they</em> had committed? <em>…Yes, </em>she thought a little sadly, feeling bad for them again, like she had when the little medic had begged her to let them bring the rest of their group from the campfire too, <em>I would fear it was not enough too, probably. I think if I had done something so horrible, I would fear no one would ever show mercy to me, no matter how sorry I was or how different I had become. It’s no wonder you’re scared.</em></p><p>Part of her felt guilty, for feeling like that towards them. She had <em>seen</em> their past, after all. How <em>awful </em>it was. The very first night in this realm, Nergal had showed her his own memories of what these infidels had done while seeking to destroy him—seen them massacre priestesses just like herself, as if it was a sport. Unarmed, trying to save their followers. Brutally, slowly, and they had mocked and jeered, dragging them out to pyres, or to be tied down and bled on alters, cut to pieces or whipped to death with hooks. It had been sickening. Even with the plague she had lived through, and everything else horrible ever brought before her in life, it had been by far the worst thing Adiris had ever seen. And how could it be right to ever offer anyone forgiveness for a deed like that? How could that be fair to their victims?</p><p><em>…But still, </em>she thought, somehow unable to crush the sympathy in her gut while looking at their faces, in spite of the phantom sensation of the smell of blood that always lingered when she recalled those horrible memories, <em>Perhaps you were not the same. I did not see your faces at the front of the crowds. Perhaps you did not stop them, but you did not love the violence, or mock, or jeer. Maybe you were cowards, not monsters. </em>Or… Maybe with enough suffering, people, even monsters, could change. Part of her wanted to hope so; part of her hated the idea. So instead, she chose to believe for now that perhaps they had been cowards instead—brought along, and swept up, and young, and following another’s lead, and that they had not been like the horrible men cutting off body parts one by one while their victim screamed beneath them, that they had just been too coward to stop it, or to flee. That was forgivable. And they certainly had suffered for their part in all of this—by her hand, by Nergal’s, at the hands of the other servants here. She had seen them experience unbearable agony after agony in rituals, and whatever else was true, and whatever specific deeds they had done, they certainly <em>had</em> paid for it, and with rivers of blood, and that was undeniable. And she was <em>so certain </em>that they were sorry—they looked it—they looked sad, and afraid, and the leader had tried to get his friend to leave him and save himself when she had first caught him in the little temple, and the little medic had thrown himself at her feet and begged her to share mercy with his friends because he hadn’t just wanted to have a second chance to survive—he had wanted them all to have one. <em>They <span class="u">must</span> have changed. There is no other explanation.</em></p><p>“Alkānim,” she said, motioning them towards her, and they looked past her at the room waiting beyond and exchanged looks, and hesitated, so Adiris stepped towards them, and they shifted back a little and regarded her with fear, but they had nowhere to run, so they didn’t. They just held still as she came. <em>You think I brought you here to kill you, </em>thought Adiris sadly, watching that, <em>You’re sure of it now. </em></p><p>She had been trying to seem aloof and professional and above them, detached. She hadn’t wanted to give them any weakness they could use—she really had to be certain, after all, if she was going to bring infidels before her God for consideration, that they truly <em>meant </em>what they claimed. But they were <em>so </em>afraid of her. If he were willing to let go of his leader, the little medic might have had a chance to run, and he must know it, but he was staying anyway, and that was brave, in the face of death, and it had gone from hard to impossible not to pity them.</p><p>Relenting in her desire to seem thoroughly unreadable, Adiris held up a hand calmingly, trying to show them she wasn’t going to do what they were so certain of, and then stepped past them and placed her palms against their backs and started to gently usher them towards the open doorway.</p><p>“Should we fight?” asked the medic hopelessly. Usually she had very little idea what either of them was saying, but this time, she was pretty sure by his tone and the look on his face that he was asking his leader what to do.</p><p>“No,” answered the leader quietly, “<em>You </em>should let go and run—”</p><p>“—I’m not gonna—!” started the medic.</p><p>“—But I know you won’t,” cut back in the leader, voice somewhere between sadness and acceptance, “So we should try not to make her mad. If it comes to it, though—I mean <em>really </em>comes to it? Blood starts shedding? You do everything you can to get out of here alive. Okay? Even leaving me behind.”</p><p>“I will do everything <em>but </em>that,” answered the medic in the same level voice the leader was using while Adiris gently directed them far enough into the room to shut the door behind them.</p><p>Whatever they’d said to each other, the leader smiled kind of sadly at his friend, and they seemed a little more okay after that. Which made her very curious what they <em>had </em>said, but she had less than no way to know. Still—she was pleased. They were at least doing a little better now, and they were where she needed them to be.<em> So far so good. Alright, next up.</em></p><p>“Babbanû. Enna,” said Adiris, stepping back out of the room and reaching up, and the boys turned at her voice just in time to see her snag the metal bars and pull them back down against the base so they locked, sealing them inside.</p><p>“Wait!” called the leader, letting go of his friend and stumbling forward unevenly to get as close to her as he could. He closed his hands around the patterned bars and looked up at her desperately. “Wait—please! Don’t do this! What do you want from us?”</p><p>“Īde attunu tapallāḫā,” said Adiris sympathetically, knowing he’d have no idea what she was saying, and doing her best to communicate though her tone and face instead, so he might feel at least a little reassured. <em>I know. I know you’re afraid. But it’s going to be okay. I can’t have you wandering off, so I’m leaving you here, but I will come back. I’m going to bring some texts, to help me explain things. </em> She took a breath and kept goin, working <em>really </em>hard to convey all that through her tone, or, if that was impossible, to at least get a little reassurance across. “Attunu tataqqānā. Tadâlluā ul anaddānum-ma, attunu annīkiam ezzib. Arḫiš âtar. Šiṭirtu aleqqâm ana kâšūtum apaššāq. Âtar, amtamīt.” <em>I promise, I will come back.</em></p><p>She held up a hand peaceably, hoping he at least understood that gesture, and then turned quickly to get what she needed.</p><p>“Please!” she heard the leader calling after her, “What do you want? You have no reason to keep us locked up here! We can’t do anything! Please, come back!”</p><p><em>Poor foreigners, </em>she thought, feeling almost guilty, because they were so incredibly afraid of her when she had no intention to hurt them at all. For once, she didn’t <em>want </em>to frighten them. She was doing the best she could, though.</p><p>“Why couldn’t you speak a common language?” she murmured to herself as she hurried down a hallway, irritated irrationally at the foreigners for being from too far away. <em>Foreigners? </em>Funny—that wasn’t—well. It wasn’t wrong, but she’d never thought of them that way before. But if they were seeking redemption from Nergal, then she guessed ‘infidels’ really <em>wasn’t </em>the right term anymore.</p><p>She was going so fast she almost dropped a tablet as she retrieved it from its slot in the archives, and she cursed herself under her breath. <em>Why are being so unprofessional? You are a high priestess. </em>That should have made her able to treat this all as just routine, but... But she was…<em>excited</em>. How was this exciting? This was such a childish thing to be excited over. <em>Be professional. Be refined. Come on, </em>she told herself, getting the last tablet she needed and hurrying undignifiedly back towards the center room of the temple until she was close to being in sight, and then slowing down and walking with her chin up and chest out so she could look like she’d been this composed the whole time. <em>Why are you doing this? You’re not a girl anymore! </em></p><p>They were still waiting by the door—or, the leader was. She didn’t see the medic at first. The leader was right where she’d left him, still gripping the bars too, and he saw her almost instantly and looked relieved, and then almost immediately after that, worried, and he let go of the bars and winced and sucked in a breath as his leg hurt him while he backed away from the door a little. He called something to the other boy, and the medic quickly appeared in her line of sight as well; he’d been off in a corner of the room, apparently. <em>Probably looking for a way out. </em>That didn’t make her mad. First of all, she knew it was impossible to escape that gilded cage around the alter, and secondly, she knew they were only doing it because they were terrified of her. <em>They’ll understand soon, though. </em></p><p>Reaching the door, Adiris shifted the tablets to her left arm and retrieved her key and opened the door again. The younger boy started to get a little close to the door when she went to lift it up, and it occurred to her he might try to bolt past her, so she gave him a warning look and sucked in a breath like she might vomit on him, and he immediately backed up all the way to the alter and stayed there beside his leader, <em>very </em>threatened by the potential of that.</p><p><em>Good. Alright, </em>thought Adiris, relaxing because they seemed fairly compliant and easy to handle, which would help—especially considering how hard it would be to communicate with them—and she closed the gate behind her again and faced them.</p><p>They both looked terrified, faces gone ashy and breathing a little too fast. When she looked at them, the leader put an arm out in front of the medic like he could bar her from getting past him to hurt him, and the medic glanced over at him in surprise.</p><p>“What do you want from us?” asked the leader hopelessly, looking up into her face.</p><p>Adiris held up a hand and moved towards them and the alter. Both boys immediately moved too, backing away from her, towards one of the walls. There was very little distance to <em>go </em>though, because the space was only about twenty feet at its longest point in circumference. She decided to just let them back away, and went and set her tablets down on the alter before turning to face them.</p><p><em>Okay. I can figure out how to do this. </em>She took a breath, working very hard <em>not</em> to look like she was still trying to figure things out, and addressed them. “Attunu tenīnā. Napšuru tartasiā,” she started slowly, pointing to them and mimicking gestures for praying, and then looking sorrowfully up at the ceiling. It was kind of difficult to convey something like <em>‘You have been praying to be given forgiveness’</em>, but she was doing her best. <em>‘That Nergal might forgive you.’ How…? Izzirtu! –Stop it. Just think. It can’t be that hard to convey. Okay… </em>“Aššu Nergal,” she picked up one of her tablets Nergal himself had provided her during her first week here from off the alter and indicated a drawing of Nergal in the form he usually chose here, the smoke and claws, “pīqat ipaddûkunūšim.” She pointed from the drawing, to them, and mimicked praying again. “Anna?” she added, nodding. <em>Right?</em></p><p>The boys exchanged looks.</p><p>“Uh,” said the medic.</p><p>“Is she…is she asking us to…” The leader looked at nothing and got an indescribable look on his face. “She’s telling us to pray to the Entity, isn’t she.”</p><p>“Yeah,” said the medic in the exact some tone of voice, looking suddenly halfway not <em>between</em> either laughing or crying, but to doing both at once.</p><p>“Why?” asked the leader miserably, appealing to his friend.</p><p><em>What part of this did they not get? </em>wondered Adiris, a little nervous, because she had thought that part would be the easiest—it was just her opening phrase, to like, bring them back to speed at where they’d been in the little temple.</p><p>“I don’t know,” said the medic, just as distressed.</p><p>“Anna?” said Adiris again, nodding at them, and making the praying gesture.</p><p>They exchanged glances.</p><p>“…I’m not committing blasphemy,” said the medic to his leader.</p><p>“What the fuck!” agreed the leader like he just couldn’t believe anything that was happening to him, “I’m not either! What is happening? I can’t believe I’m not even religious and I’m probably about to get killed for refusing to commit blasphemy but I’m not fucking praying to the <em>Entity</em>! I’d pray to <em>her</em> to save myself, but the Entity?!”</p><p>“Yeah,” agreed the medic, “That’s too messed up.”</p><p>“It’s too messed up!” agreed the leader on top of him, “That’s too fucked! What, it’s going to torture us, and kill us, and steal our lives, and now it wants to blackmail us into <em>praying </em>to it too? God. Am I really going to die because I’m refusing to do that?”</p><p>“I…you don’t have to,” said the medic, “If you want—”</p><p>“—I <em>really </em>don’t want, though,” said the leader, “Like, I don’t even have <em>words </em>for how much I <em>do not want </em>to fucking <em>worship </em>the goddamn Entity. I mean. Jesus—everything it’s taken from us, and we have no choice about, and torturing us endlessly here, now it wants us to just lay down and die and accept <em>choosing </em>to worship it too? I... I might<em> actually</em> rather die than do that. I don’t know. God, I think maybe I would.”</p><p>The young medic gave his leader a sympathetic look and turned to Adiris and shook his head.</p><p><em><span class="u">What</span></em>?</p><p>Okay. What could they think she’d just said to react like that, because they must have misunderstood. <em>…They could…maybe they think I am asking if they also serve Nergal <span class="u">already</span>, and they think if they say yes it will be a lie? </em>That was…possible. She guessed. It had to be <em>some </em>kind of translation error.</p><p>“Attunu,” she tried again, going slower &amp; gesturing as she did, <em>‘You’.</em> “Ana Nergal tenīnā,” <em>‘Pray. To Nergal’. </em> She picked up the tablet again to point at the picture of him, and they were both already shaking their heads. “Lā. Dumqū,” she promised, setting the tablet down and walking over towards them. <em>It’s okay. </em></p><p>They looked nervous, they but had nowhere to go, and when she reached them, she pushed first the younger one and then the leader down to their knees and then tugged the leader’s hands together so they were clasped, and went to do the same to the medic, trying to <em>show </em>what she meant, and that it was okay for them to do it, but he was shaking his head at her, and resisted when she tried to move him.</p><p>“No,” said the medic adamantly, struggling to pull his arms back, “I’m not doing that.”</p><p>“Quentin,” said the leader beside him like something had just clicked, “Let’s just pretend to! She doesn’t speak English. What if we just kneel here and say horrible stuff about it really vulgarly in English? No dying <em>and </em>no worshiping.”</p><p>“W-uh. I…guess,” said the medic a little uncertainly, “You think?”</p><p>Whatever the leader had said to him, the medic let her move his hands this time and kept them there. <em>Good, </em>thought Adiris, greatly relieved. That had to mean the leader understood, right? And if he did, he could explain to the medic.</p><p>“…This still feels weird,” said the medic to the leader as she stood up again.</p><p>“Yeah,” answered the leader quietly in much the same tone, “I don’t like it either. It feels…shitty.”</p><p>The medic nodded.</p><p>“Maybe we can fix that. … Fuck the Entity! It’s a gross piece of shit, and it doesn’t deserve a single person to ever worship it,” continued the leader with a lot more certainty in his voice. Adiris glanced over at him because from the tone she’d thought maybe he was talking to her, but he didn’t seem to be. He smiled at his friend, though, so that had to be a good sign. “Yeah,” he added, “That feels a lot better.”</p><p>“Yeah?” echoed the medic, a little reassured, “Okay… If I had the chance, I would die to take out the Entity, and never regret a thing! Sadistic evil fucking demon! I would <em>love </em>to watch you die! …Yeah, that does help,” he said a little more brightly, smiling back at his friend.</p><p><em>Oh good—they both get it, </em>thought Adiris, relieved and pleased. “Babbanû,” said Adiris to them, nodding, and then trying to match her words with gestures so they would understand, “Kīam akâšukunūšim.” <em>Then I can help you.</em></p><p>They glanced at her, then each other.</p><p>“Well. She’s…happy, at least,” offered the leader to his friend, “I. Think…”</p><p>“…Why do you think she’s doing this?” asked the medic after a moment, looking troubled, “Do you think…that. …All the people upstairs? Th-the sick people, like her? That, maybe…they were survivors once?”</p><p>“What? Oh God—did it look like that?” asked the leader, sounding low-key horrified about whatever his friend had said, “—But—wait-wait, they speak whatever language she’s speaking too, though. Or—one of them did. So. Maybe it’s something else.”</p><p>“Right,” agreed the medic slowly, like he’d forgotten, “…I hope so.”</p><p>“Mostly I just…I wish I really understood what she wants,” said the leader, eyeing her for a moment before glancing back at his friend.</p><p>Adiris thought she should probably go ahead and stop them from talking and continue with her work, but it was fascinating to her. They spoke so fast, over each other at times, and the language was so <em>different</em> sounding from Akkadian. Even here, she spent not as much time as she would have liked with her followers—she wasn’t meant to, as a priestess—she had to be separate—above them, as she was a little sacred herself. And that meant she couldn’t mingle the same way. As a touch divine, she had to <em>be </em>a touch divine—no common socializing, no depending on them for hearing her secrets or giving reassurance. And she was never really even just <em>near </em>them when they behaved like this with each other either—because she wasn’t meant to be. She was Nergal’s, and she was meant to stay apart, and people would always <em>act </em>professional and reserved and dignified when she was near them—they were meant to, and they knew it. But. All that meant that it had been a very long time since she’d actually been near people behaving like friends. Like she had almost been able to be sometimes with the other girls at the old temple in Babylon as a very young child, so long ago. Back when she was allowed to be more human, back before becoming who she’d always been meant to be. It was so familiar and unusual at once to see it again now, it was hard not to be enraptured by it.</p><p>“If we pretend to pray to the Entity, do you think she’ll let us go?” asked the medic.</p><p>“I don’t know,” answered the leader, “I still don’t get why she wants us to do this at all.”</p><p>“…Yeah,” agreed the medic after a second, thinking, “She didn’t just kill us. And she’s been…weird, about all this. But not hostile, really. I don’t…what could cause somebody to do that? She’s never had a problem killing us before. I-I don’t even know if she has one <em>now. </em>She might just be making us do something before she puts one of us on that alter and cuts our heart out.”</p><p>“God, don’t say that,” pleaded the leader, “You’re gonna jinx us.”</p><p>Adiris cleared her throat. They glanced back at her. Their attention regained, Adiris held up her first tablet again and indicated the drawing of Nergal. “Nergal,” she told them, although she expected they already knew his name.</p><p>“N-Nehr—Nergal?” tried the medic. She had been wrong, apparently. But she nodded.</p><p>“Attunu,” she said, pointing to them, then mimicking gestures she named and pointing to the tablet again, “ša ennānim-ma Nergal pīqat ipaddûkunūšim, u kīnūtu timânim. Napšuru tartasiā.” Some of that was a little hard to convey. <em>‘You must pray to be forgiven’ </em>wasn’t so bad, but ‘<em>And you need to swear fealty to him, to be given mercy,’ </em>was not exactly the simplest concept to get across. Adiris did her best, though. She pointed to them and tried an open handed <em>to give </em>gesture she thought had been pretty good, and then a deep and respectful bow for ‘fealty,’ and then indicated Nergal’s image on the tablet. After a beat to let them know that thought was finished and she was starting another, she pointed to the image again and repeated the <em>to give </em>motion, then raised her incense burner threateningly like she would strike them down—which was unintentionally way too effective and immediately got both of them to go completely rigid like they were preparing to fling themselves out of the way if she took a shot and made her feel very bad about her communication choices—but halfway through her swinging motion, she stopped and let out a breath and lowered the weapon and shook her head, and offered a hand instead, like she would help them up, hoping the whole ‘stopping a violent act and offering help instead’ pantomime would appropriately convey the idea of <em>mercy </em>to them. It was…almost like playing a game, weirdly, to be doing this. It had been…Adiris hadn’t played a game since one of her earliest years at the temple, as a very, very small girl. She’d gotten in trouble for being gone too long, playing with children in the street, and never done it again. She’d seen others playing, though.</p><p>“…I think that was…if we do what she says and pray to the Entity like she wants, she won’t kill us?” said the leader after a second.</p><p>“I’m pretty sure so too,” agreed the medic.</p><p>They did not look like <em>they</em> were enjoying this like a game at all<em>, </em>unfortunately. But at least they didn’t look <em>totally </em>lost by her attempt at communication.</p><p>“Why on earth does she want us to do that so bad?” asked the leader, looking at his friend, who just gave him the world blankest <em>I have no fucking clue </em>stare in response and shook his head helplessly.</p><p>“Anna?” prompted Adiris, looking from one to the other to confirm recognition of what she’d said.</p><p>“Uh…I guess,” offered the leader after a second, giving her a little bit of a shrug, and then a nod.</p><p>“Babbanû. Enna,” said Adiris, very relieved, “Ukullumkunūšim-ma lišānumī ul lēʾûtim tāwû. Attunu dibbūya šunniā.” There was no real way to get most of that across, but she thought she at least conveyed the gist of the ‘<em>I will show you what to do’ </em>part with gestures. The ‘<em>because you don’t speak the language’ </em>and ‘<em>Repeat after me’ </em>she was a lot less sure she’d done a good enough job conveying with motions, but the why wasn’t important, and she was pretty confident that if she just tried to walk them through the prayer now with pauses and ‘<em>now you’</em> motions, they would surely be able to understand they were meant to echo, so it would be okay. <em>This is going pretty well, I think, </em>she thought hopefully, kind of giddy with excitement to have gotten so far so far, and trying to beat that down and focus and be professional. After giving herself a moment to take a breath and get her mind in the right mode for worship, Adiris took a step back to give herself a little extra room, and then swung her arms out wide to her sides and switched to her ritual voice, strong and full and projecting. “‘Nergal!’” She stopped there, because going one word at a time seemed best, considering that the foreigners knew <em>nothing </em>of the language, which would make it hard to memorize even a simple prayer, and she was determined to help them through the steps as much as she could. There was a very, very clearly, ‘<em>repeat after me’ </em>flavored pause, and she looked down at them and waited for their response.</p><p>The foreigners were still kneeling in front of her with their hands clasped like they were supposed to be, but they both just gaped at her. Her heart sunk a little. She had been <em>so </em>sure they’d be able to pick up from context they were supposed to echo her. <em>I…<span class="u">thought</span> I was clear…but. </em>Trying to make sure they knew what she wanted, Adiris gave a helpful ‘<em>Go on’ </em>motion with her wrist. Still nothing.</p><p>“’Nergal,’” she tried again, repeating her hand gesture.</p><p>“…Fuck,” said the medic, and his face changed in a very bad way. Like someone had just told him he was going to die. “She’s going to make us echo a prayer. We can’t English bullshit our way out of that. And I… Dwight I <em>can’t </em>do that.”</p><p>“…Yeah,” agreed the leader after a second, face gone ashy, “I’m. …I don’t think I can either. Not to the Entity. It just. I don’t even know why it feels like it would matter, because I wouldn’t mean it, but it’s like…I. …I’ve already lost <span class="u">everything</span> I have.” He turned his head and looked over at his companion kind of hopelessly. “The Entity tortures us, and kills us, and consumes us like food, and. Just. It <em>can’t</em> make me worship it. That…We have <em>so little freedom left,</em> and I don’t want to die, and I don’t want to die over something stupid, but I. I can’t I can’t do that. I don’t wanna…I don’t wanna give it that too.” For some reason, he looked incredibly upset now, enough so that he might even cry, and Adiris had no idea what had happened. It was a <em>deep </em>kind of upset—a broken one, almost. “…I fucking. I don’t have <em>anything</em>,” said the leader half to himself or the world and half to his friend, “It got me. It won. It does whatever it wants, and I can’t stop it. A-and it still wants to take my—not my freedom, it has that—but I don’t—don’t know how to describe this. I’ve never—I-I don’t even know what exactly ‘worshiping’ something would go under—my—my loyalty I guess? M-my fucking affection, or, or attachment, or something? My freedom to choose what the fuck to care about and care for, <em>even</em>? Fuck, was the rest of it not enough? I don’t…I don’t even <em>have </em>anything else left, except that—none of us do. And I’m not giving it that. At least not willingly. If it wants me to worship it, it’s going to have to beat it out of me. I’m not just giving that up.”</p><p>The medic nodded, looking as grave as the leader did, and sad in a way Adiris wasn’t even sure <em>how</em> to categorize—like he was watching a friend go to die very nobly in battle and had just agreed to go to his death with him.</p><p>
  <em>I don’t—? What happened? What’s wrong?</em>
</p><p>“Minâm?” she asked, lowering her arms, extremely confused and a little concerned by this reaction, “Minâm tušaḫṭâ?”</p><p>The boys glanced back at her. The leader shook his head. “I’m not doing that.”</p><p>“No,” agreed the medic, doing the same. He unclasped his hands and stood up.</p><p><em>What? </em>She could tell he was afraid, doing that, but determined, and she didn’t understand why he was doing it at all. He turned and offered the leader a hand.</p><p>“Naprikānim!” ordered Adiris, holding up a hand and taking a step forward to stop them. What was happening? They couldn’t have changed their minds? Could they? <em>That wouldn’t make any sense! Why? Why come so far, and then refuse! I don’t—</em></p><p>They weren’t stopping. Language barrier or no, there was no way they didn’t know what she was telling them to do, but they weren’t obeying this time. The medic had helped the leader back up and they were both on their feet now and starting to back away the about four-feet they could <em>go </em>from her, and they did, until their shoulders hit the bars keeping them in the little space and they had nowhere to go.</p><p>“Am-mīnim?” asked Adiris, frustrated with them for being so confusing and difficult, swinging her arms with force as she talked. “Mimma ul tapallaḫā! Takaššārā-ma akâššukunūšim. Nergal lā lipadûkunūšim, taṣarimā-ma ul isanniqkunūšim.” <em>Why! There is nothing to be afraid of! I will show you how. Even if Nergal refuses to forgive you, you won’t be punished for trying to make right.</em></p><p>“Please,” said the leader nervously, putting his arm out in front of the medic again like he was trying to protect him from her, “Just let us go home.”</p><p>They were scared again—she could see it in their faces. More than that—they were resigned. Sure that she would hurt them, and sure there was no way out of it. And she was annoyed and frustrated, because this should have all been so simple, and she had been excited at the thought of it, but she lowered her arms a little because seeing that brought sympathy back to her too.</p><p>Both of them looked surprised at that, and a little tentatively relieved, and that made her feel more encouraged she would be able to get through to them eventually. She was just being impatient—they were young, and afraid, and foreigners, and all of that was of course going to make this hard. There could be any number of things confusing them, after all, couldn’t there? Maybe they had different rules where they were from. Maybe there was something in what she had tried to gesture that was a very different signal in their culture. <em>You must learn to be more patient. It is just not going to be as—</em></p><p>A sudden pain slammed into her stomach, and she almost doubled over.</p><p>She heard both of the boy’s voices saying something in surprise, but had no idea what the sounds had been through the sudden agony in her stomach. <em>No, no, no! </em>It was such a bad time for this! It was part of her duty, her loyalty to Nergal, to keep the sickness in her body. The very first night finding salvation from him, he’d talked to her about how much vastly more humans valued their lives when threatened with losing them, and how choosing to continue to strive for survival even ill and deformed like she was now was glorious to her and to him, his domain of illness and chaos honored by the dedication it brought about, and this was a part of all that. The illness was often very unpleasant. That—that was a stupid thing to think. It was <em>always </em>unpleasant. Her skin was raw and painful all along her arms and hands and legs and feet where it was missing, and moving hurt the lesions across her chest, her insides felt like someone was often twisting them with a stick. She always wanted to vomit at least a little, and was tired, and aching, and the blisters of puss in her skin never <em>stopped </em>being a little bit of an agony. But usually, it subsided and stayed bearable. <em>Especially</em> when performing rituals for Nergal—there sometimes she could almost forget. But between rituals, sometimes it was like this—it would feel worse, and feel horrible, and she would have to pray to alleviate the agony, and she did not mind—she knew her body was just another offering to her God, and she was honored to bear his sickness, but it was such a terrible time for this! She would have to lock them in and leave them, go pray, and heal, and come back, and God only knew what they would do or think in that time, but like this she could not explain it to them.</p><p>Another wave of pain hit her. There was a sensation like someone had reached inside her with their hand and ripped out a handful of her guts, and she fell to a knee, gagging, so intense the urge was to retch all over the floor—but—but if she did that now, she would almost certainly infect  them, and that would make them think the wrong things. <em>I have to—get away— </em>she thought desperately past the intense thudding in her skull. Fuck, she could never tell when one of these spells was going to come on—it was part of Nergal’s natural domain, the chaos, but of—of all the times.</p><p>“What’s wrong with her?” said one of the boys—she wasn’t even sure which, but whatever he said he sounded almost worried.</p><p>The pounding in her head grew worse and the vision in her remaining eye got fuzzy, and Adiris held a hand up to her head, struggling to get her balance enough to stand. Usually when this began, she just lay on the floor and began to pray but she—she had to make it to the door and leave. Somewhere past her, Adiris faintly heard one of the boys say, “Is she dying?” and the unknown words were filled with urgency, but she had no strength to even wonder what they meant. She was realizing that she was on her knees now, and she didn’t even know when that had happened. Struggling, she tried to stand up again, and an intense stab of agony ripped through her stomach like a knife and she inadvertently choked out a sound of pain. <em>Fuck! They will think I am weak—I must—</em> She couldn’t. She couldn’t make her feet. Izzirtu—<em>Izzirtu!</em>—she was going to have to lay down and pray here, there was no choice, she…</p><p>Shaking, Adiris, lowered herself onto the cold stone floor.</p><p>“What do we do? –We could run, but—”</p><p>“I don’t know! She’s never been hurt by being sick before, has she? Do you think the Entity’s angry?”</p><p>“What? -Because she didn’t kill us?”</p><p>“Why else would it do this to her! –Right?”</p><p>They were talking over each other, so loud, the volume making the pounding in her skull worse and worse. She made down prone against the floor and opened her mouth to pray and was hit with an intense wave of nausea at just the wrong moment and couldn’t stop her body from vomiting.</p><p>“Jesus! –Is she dying!?” “What the fuck is happening to her??”</p><p>It was an intense wave of bile—orange and green rot and somehow there were maggots in the contents of her stomach, and she tried, like always, not to think about that, not to think about what they were doing in her body, and to just shut it out, but it was exhausting, and painful, and she was almost lying in it when she finally got herself to stop, and she knew in a few seconds it was going to seep back over to her, and the indignity and weakness of that was almost unbearably humiliating in front of the infidels, but she wasn’t strong enough to get up. She could smell it, and do nothing. <em>Just pray, </em>she thought, shutting her eyes, still tasting acid and rot in her throat, trying to pull through, <em>It will end.</em></p><p>One of them got closer, she was vaguely aware. They sounded worried and horrified, and she registered that in the back of her mind, but didn’t have the energy to assign it any real meaning. “Can we help you!—Do you need help?”</p><p>“Fuck! Fuck—Is there anything we can do? Quentin, do you have any—?”</p><p>“No. I—I don’t know. Fuck! –There has to be something! Oh God, are those—?”</p><p>“Yeah.”</p><p>“How is she still alive! I-I don’t know what to do. Even with a good medkit—she’s so fucked up. And I don’t have anything on me! I’d need a miracle to—Wait! …Please, please, please. Come on.”</p><p>She wasn’t sure if the boy had started to whisper his last few words, or her hearing was disintegrating, but another stab of pain twisted in her gut and she stopped thinking about it at all. <em>I’m going to retch again. I haven’t even gotten a word of prayer out—I need to—</em></p><p>And then the pain in her head stopped. It went all at once from an intense pounding, to a dull ache, and the stabbing sensation urging her to retch all over herself and the floor of the temple subsided with a feeling like a cool breeze settling all around her, or like stepping into a slow moving stream in the summer. <em>What? </em>thought Adiris, beyond lost, suddenly looking with clear vision in her one working eye at arms that were no longer shaking, because she had energy to do it again. Energy to look, and to move, and to push herself up onto her elbows, and she did, thoroughly lost as to what was happening, and then as she watched, something stranger began. The skin on her chest—there were lesions there—there had been for years. Cracks, green and black puss seeping through them, along her rotting flesh. But the lesions started to close up as she watched in first confusion, and then horror. The edges of her skin changed color with them, like skin again. They were <em>healing.</em></p><p>“Are you okay?”</p><p>One of the boys—she had been lost in finding a source for this magic at all until he’d spoken, but she looked up then. It had been the leader, and he was talking to their medic. The younger boy must have started to fall, because the leader was supporting his weight and helping him stand upright again, and the medic was shaky while regaining his feet, face scrunched up in concentration, and sweating a little, breathing hard, but he nodded at his friend. “Y-yeah. It’s. Wow, it’s been a while since it took this much out of me. B-but I think I’m okay. I’ve never done that like this before.”</p><p>“I didn’t know you <em>could</em> do that,” said the leader, sounding impressed and a little stunned, “I thought you just auto-healed <em>us</em>.”</p><p>“I-I do,” agreed the medic, “I didn’t know I could either. I didn’t…I don’t know. I. Should I have not? I-I just—I didn’t even know if that would work on a killer, but I just—I-I didn’t want her to…die.” He gave his leader a look like he felt guilty about whatever he’d just said. “—She—I mean. I thought—she’d just stopped coming at us, like she might actually be listening to you—and if the Entity was hurting her for that—it—she’s been so weird today, I just thought—”</p><p>“—No, I’m. Glad you did,” said the leader, giving him a shaky smile, “I was afraid she was going to die too. I don’t know what she is, but she’s…” He glanced at Adiris. “I—I get it’s complicated. It is. But you’re right. We don’t really know what’s going on, and if she <em>was </em>getting killed for helping us, it would have been—What I’m trying to say is: Good job.” He gave him a kind of thump on the shoulder in congratulations, and with the motion, it clicked in Adiris’ head what they must be talking about. <em>YOU.</em></p><p>“I mean, I didn’t do much,” said the medic sheepishly, “I don’t even know how that skill works—it just kind of turns on automatically when—”</p><p>Adiris shot to her feet with a scream of rage and the boys barely had time to see what was coming before she had her clawed hands around the medic’s throat and was slamming him back against the wall by them with all her strength, overcome with fury. “Sumaktar!” she shrieked at him, so angry and hurt and betrayed she wanted to cry and snap his neck at the same time. <em>BASTARD. </em>He’d choked out something when she grabbed him, but he couldn’t speak at all now, and was feverishly clawing at her hands, and then trying to kick her and break her grip with his elbows, but she was <em>much </em>stronger than him, and while his fingernails hurt against her raw flesh, she was <em>not letting go. INFIDEL! Monster! I offer you a chance? I offer you HOPE?! </em>How <strong>dare </strong>he?! “Nazrum! Umāmum! Rittu ušamḫarkunūšim?  Puqqum ušamḫarkunūšim?!</p><p>Behind her, the other boy was screaming, shouting for her to stop, she was sure, but she was almost as angry at him as the medic, and the second he got close enough to try to stop her, she kicked him hard enough to send him crashing back against the alter.</p><p>“Rittu ušamḫarkunūšim u apaddi! Ištu bīšu ilkakātū tāpēšū-ma <em>epēšum annûm</em> tappēšā?!” she yelled, slamming him back against the wall hard.<em> I give you a chance and show you mercy, after the horrors you have wrought, and you do <span class="u">this</span>?!</em> There was a sickening <em>CRACK </em>as his head hit the bars, and she was filled with hateful glee at the sound of it. It was what this monster deserved! After everything she had just tried to do! All of the pity and forgiveness and change she had allowed herself to believe in, even after the atrocities she had seen them commit? And <em>this </em>was how they answer her?! “Ana ēkurrî ababbilkunūšim u apaddikunūšim!” she shouted, tightening her grip, “U ina danānu, ina danānu, taktaṣdā-ma tebteleā pagri! Taštalṭuniāšim-ma tadtannttā šillatam ilī ētereḫ-ma tušeppešenni. Ina pagrīya! Tušalpātanni! Ēkurrušuāku! Murṣušu akkunna ušaddād! Ilum ša murṣu tīdeā-ma takbittūya u biltî  taṣtarm-ma taštarqā? Naqbum!” <em>I bring you to my temple and show you mercy! And you force me against my will—take over my body and you use it without my permission and force me to commit sacrilege against my God?! In my own body! You defile me! I am his temple! I bear his plague with honor! You know he is the god of plagues, the God you seek to destroy, and you try to rip my honor and my burden from me? Fucker!</em></p><p>“Please,” choked out the medic, voice barely audible at all through the crushing pressure she was applying on his windpipe. The boy’s face was turning purple and he was barely struggling at all now, terrified, and it was what he should be. How could he have <em>done </em>this? She was so—was so humiliated, and betrayed, and ashamed! How could she explain this to Nergal? <em>How could you force me to do this! </em>She wanted to cry. She felt violated and she wanted to snap his neck. She was <em>going </em>to, she thought.</p><p>“Please! Please, stop! Let him go! Please! He didn’t do anything wrong! Please! You’re killing him!”</p><p>The leader was up again, calling from behind her, and again when he got close, limping and running unevenly on his injured leg, she kicked him and flung him easily back, and kept going, kept choking the life out of the boy who had done this to her. The medic looked into her face in fear and horror, pleading silently since he couldn’t talk, and she felt nothing through her rage. They had been <em>happy—</em>she had <em>heard </em>them! They had done this to her and thought it was a good joke! Thought it was fun to do something like this—to possess someone and force them to commit a blasphemy in their own body, to rip away something so sacred. She wanted to cry, she wanted to scream, she didn’t know what to do at all, through the agony and the betrayal overwhelming her. The medic’s eyes rolled back and then shut as he finally lost too much air, and his body went limp, and because she was so angry, she didn’t even care he wasn’t fighting back anymore—she wanted to punish him, punish him for all the evil she had seen them do and let herself forget and think of forgiving, and for the awful thing he had just done to her, and she rammed him against the wall again and kept choking, tightened her grip as much as she could, hands aching with the effort to break the thing they were wrapped around, and then something heavy and solid slammed into the back of her head with enormous force and everything went black.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>In DbD, Adiris is the only killer with voice lines, and one of only two characters period to have them (the other being Ash). It’s a little hard to translate these, for multiple reasons. One is that it seems decently likely that the Devs were lazy and mixed both Babylonian and Akkadian when writing her dialogue. Since that’s not entirely for sure, though, and she is definitely speaking some Akkadian and one of the tablets in her temple mentions a specific king from the kingdom Simurrum, which places Adiris during the Akkadian period between 2000 and 1500 BC, which means she /should/ be speaking Akkadian and just Akkadian, I’ve translated all her dialogue (that is spoken to someone who doesn’t understand her language) into Akkadian. Even working from just an Akkadian base, it’s a little hard to translate her voice lines, because Akkadian has a lot of similar and repetitive sounds, but the only Akkadian likely translation for her mori voice line I’ve found so far would be, “Addānika! Dingir ašāpume,” which means, “Your attention please! God, exorcize them!” which makes a lot of sense to me, and was a cool tidbit. In other fun news, Adiris’ parents were trash not only for abandoning her, but for giving her a name that literally means “fearfully” – as in living in/doing everything in fear. </p><p>I did a whole lot of research into how to write and conjugate Akkadian for this fic. I’m sure it is not perfect despite my best efforts (especially the theme vowels, which were by far the most difficult aspect), but I put a lot of time into this, and am pretty proud of the results. Akkadian is a fascinating language. It’s also an extremely dead language. Which makes learning it hard. It’s also a Semitic language, which are written/spoken extremely differently than English, so it was really cool to learn some of the basic rules. In Akkadian, they don’t really use any punctuation, or pronouns (except for emphasis), and instead attach suffixes prefixes and sometimes affixes to words to indicate the gender and number and tense (you’re going to see a /whole/ lot of ‘ta’ somethings and ‘a’ somethings, since in /most/ forms of verbs and nouns, both the second person male singular, and second person plural ‘you/you all’ begin with a ‘ta’ prefix, and the first person singular ‘I’ begins with an ‘a’ prefix). The verb is always last in a sentence, though the other word orders have some variety. Both the ‘u’ you see between words and the ‘-ma’ suffix mean ‘and’. U is an ‘and’ that does not imply a causal relationship, and ‘-ma’ is one that does (IE: I am going to the store, and he’s staying home for a nap [non-causal and], vs ‘I saw you crying, and I was afraid it was because of something I said [causal and].) Usually the Akkadian is more or less translated right after it is written as a thought in English, but I have compiled a list of translations and there’s a link the list in the chapter notes for chapter one, if you’re curious.</p><p>The name for this fic as a whole, actually, is also taken from an Akkadian translation. I wanted something that would really fit the mood and the content and the theme, and looking at the many different titles for the underworld, it caught my eye that in multiple translations, erṣetu la târi and kurnugû to be precise, the name given for the Underworld translates to 'The Earth of No Return,' and there's something very poetic and foreboding about that, and it was exactly the sentiment I was looking for. It's a very sad and fitting name to give an afterlife.</p><p>Hey! I hope you're enjoying this so far, and continue to! My girl Adiris has been exceptionally fun to write, and I hope she's just as enjoyable to read. Thanks again. &lt;3</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Adiris</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Adiris hits a crossroads. Quentin and Dwight face some life or death choices. Adiris goes up against a God.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <em>“Kill them.”</em>
</p><p>There were shrieks and sounds of violence suffocating the air of the temple, and all of it was steeped in the smell of blood.</p><p>People were running. Some blindly—just fleeing, nothing left but desperation. Some trying to shield others, to direct them, and then lock a door and turn back to face death alone, in the miniscule hope it might stall it long enough to give others a chance. But none of them were going to make it, and she knew this. She hadn’t.</p><p>Adiris couldn’t remember how she’d gotten here, or where exactly she was, but it was a temple, and she knew what was happening, and that was what mattered.</p><p>And they were all going to die.</p><p>Someone grabbed her by her hair and dragged her up, and she screamed and tried to fight, but her arms were tied in front of her, and she couldn’t make him stop. The man pulled her along the temple floor, slick with blood, towards a waiting crowd, and several other people dressed like her, kneeling at the edge of it, bound too. When they reached the edge of the raised dais they were on, the man dragging her flung her to the stone floor and then slammed a foot against her back to keep her there.</p><p>“We have won this day!” he shouted to the crowd, to roars of applause. There were so many of them, a sea of painted faces and torches and weapons and eyes glaring back. “How shall we mark it?”</p><p>People in the crowd started to chant and scream, <em>“Sacrifice!” </em>again and again, slamming weapons against the ground in rhythm.</p><p>On her far left, Adiris saw one of the men grab another priestess and drag her up by her hair like she had been moved, and the woman screamed and tried to pull free, but two more men joined the first and dragged her to the edge of the stage.</p><p>“To the warriors!” called the first man. And they flung the priestess into the crowd.</p><p>Adiris stared at her in horror, heard shrieks and pleas and screams of agony, and she wanted to bear witness like it might help the other woman to not have to die alone, but she could not bear it and shut her eyes and turned her head away, shuddering, having already seen too much.</p><p>“To the country!”</p><p>She made herself look again, and saw them drag the second priestess up and take her down the dais steps towards a waiting pyre, and the group parted for them, jeering and spitting and slicing at the woman as she went past. Adiris began to cry as she watched the woman go up on the waiting pile of wood and be lashed to it, knowing what would come. And then someone threw a torch, and all there was were shrieks and fire and the smell of burning flesh, and Gods, she screamed for so much longer than Adiris had thought she could possibly still be alive. And it wasn’t even over yet when the man returned and stopped beside her.</p><p>“To the Gods,” he proclaimed, grinning at her, blood in his teeth.</p><p>People grabbed her, and she struggled, kicking and screaming, and trying to bite, praying desperately to be saved, but nothing came to save her, and she was dragged up onto an alter in the middle of the open room. Someone tied her wrists to a ring at the top of it, her feet to others, so she was pinned in place, and people closed around her, drawing daggers and brandishing them like fangs flashing in the moonlight. She had never been so afraid. The other woman was somehow still screaming—they were <em>both </em>still screaming. And she was going to be screaming too, in a moment. Losing fingers and toes and ears and eyes and tongue and nose and then hands, feet, piece by piece, until she had lost enough to be finally allowed to die. She was so afraid to die like that, but there was no stopping them. There was no mercy or pity or sympathy or hesitation in the faces of the men closing around her. She couldn’t even move. One of the infidels grabbed her hand and forced a finger apart from the rest and brought his knife beside it and looked back at her, then swung the knife, and stopped just short of severing it, and laughed at the fear and horror on her face when he did it—playing with her, turning her misery and death into a game, and she recognized him. She had not thought she knew any of them, but it was the medic. And behind him, the one who had been speaking, though he had not sounded like him at all, she recognized now as the leader, and he was watching from a step back, watching her be killed, like he was hungry for it. And he gave one of the men a nod and a knife came down.</p><p>Adiris jerked awake with a gasp, still seeing the scene she’d been in in her head for a second before realizing it hadn’t been her. That had been something Nergal had shown her happening to a different woman. It had never been her. But as awful as those memories had always been, they had never felt so real as they had in that dream, and she couldn’t stop shaking, hearing phantom screams still echo and smelling blood.</p><p><em>You’re not dead—it wasn’t you. </em>What had happened? She…had…<em>Wait.</em></p><p>Him.</p><p>Her right eye had taken a minute to work, and she was blind completely without it, but the scene before her cleared, and she was laying on her side in the heart of the temple, and almost the second she realized that and remembered what had been happening the last moment she was conscious—the magic one of them had used on her, the sudden pain in her head—she saw them. Saw the leader, sitting perhaps ten feet away, propped against the base of the alter, watching her and holding the medic in his lap, and she was consumed with rage and hate at the sight of him even more than before, the dream still so real, what they had done to her remembered fully beside the memories of things done to people long before her arrival, and she shouted incoherently in fury and lunged for him, and there was something wrong about the way her voice sounded, but she stopped wondering about that halfway through the first thought, because her lunge was immediately stopped short and she was dragged back by her arms, which didn’t come with the rest of her body.</p><p><em>What? No! He wouldn’t dare to— </em>She turned to look, and saw what she had feared was true, and her wrists had been tied together and to the wall. With <em>her </em>chain—he had used the chain of her incense burner. The blasphemers! Smart and horrible at once, he had taken the only thing in the room with a chance to secure her at all, and used something sacred of hers to trap her. <em>Bastard!</em> He must have hit her with something before, to knock her out, and then dragged her here, because her head still ached and felt all wrong and she wasn’t even near where she had been when she’d last been conscious—she was about fifteen feet off, by the barred exit she’d let them in through. And he’d taken the chain of her incense burner and looped it through a part of the decorative iron in the gate and then around her wrists, securing her to the very base of the door so she couldn’t stand or even sit up anymore. Incensed, she immediately started to try to rip her wrists free, and then when she saw that was impossible, started trying to angle her hands so she could untie herself.</p><p>“Don’t.” The voice had been low and hard, a warning, and she looked up at the sound and saw the leader had shifted and let go of the medic to pick up a large stone that was spattered with blood. He had it raised in her direction menacingly like a bludgeon. “I’ll kill you,” he threatened, words unfamiliar but the first half of a throwing motion made in her direction that accompanied it unmistakable in meaning.</p><p>Adiris froze and felt time slow as she thought frantically. She might be able to free herself, with enough time on the knots, but she would not at all be able to do that fast enough to fight back or defend herself if he came at her with the stone. <em>I could— </em>The plague—she had that! It probably wouldn’t kill him fast, but it might buy her time to get her wrists free—it was a chance, and he was not far enough away to avoid her, so she went to suck in a breath and vomit, and was instantly aware of what she’d missed before, and it settled on her with overwhelming horror. There was something in her mouth. Cloth. He’d <em>gagged</em> her while she was out. She shook her head and tried to fling it free, tried to push it out with her tongue, and couldn’t budge it. He’d tied it in place. What had he—?—she couldn’t see it, but it must be the piece of fabric he’d worn around his neck, because it was missing from him now. The bastard! She had brought them here to show them mercy, and they had possessed her and forced her to commit blasphemy, and then hurt her and tied her up and gagged her like a prisoner in her own temple! <em>But I can’t fight, then, </em>she realized, the anger giving way to something worse. <em>I can’t…I can’t defend myself. I’m… </em>She was in trouble. And gagged, she realized this meant she had no way to call for help from her followers or Nergal either. Meant she was tied up down here in a little cage with two of the monstrous infidels who had killed many priestesses before her, and had no way to escape, and realizing that, she was afraid.</p><p>Her anger didn’t subside, but it was swallowed up in images of things she had just dreamed, of the sudden fear it wasn’t a dream so much as a premonition—a warning of things to come, sent too late, and there was a bottomed-out, hollow feeling in her gut as reality set in. <em>He will kill me. </em>Realizing that, Adiris slowly lowered her hands from the chains and stopped trying to free herself, glaring up at the young man in furry, humiliated trapped here on her side on the temple floor, and wanting him to see her rage at that because she was terrified he might see the fear and use it. It had been a long time since she had felt real fear, but for the first time in a long time, she didn’t know what was going to happen to her, and she had almost <em>no </em>control over the outcome herself. She had not felt this way since she had been dying of the plague in that cave in a pile of her own vomit, but this was even worse. Because she knew what kinds of things these people might do. <em>Monsters, </em>she thought with a mixture of hopelessness and anger and hatred. She wanted to cry, because she was helpless and that scared her and all of it felt so awful, but she wouldn’t give them that. It was what they wanted from her, and she wouldn’t do it, so she tried to focus on the fury she felt at herself and the two infidels instead for her own sake too, tracking the man as he watched her for a second and then when he seemed satisfied she’d stopped, lowered the stone and set it back down.</p><p><em>I can’t believe I was so stupid! </em>thought Adiris, unbelievably angry and despairing with herself,<em> I never should have pitied you! I may be killed, and it is my fault for giving in to weakness and pride and selfishness!—Why—<strong>why </strong>did I do this!</em></p><p>The leader resumed his stance leaning against the alter and raised the medic back into his lap, then looked over at her miserably as she glared at him for a few seconds, before turning his attention to the body in his arms. He shifted and raised it higher so that it was propped against his shoulder, and then turned away from her and pulled the boy close against him and pressed his head against its shoulder, embracing it.</p><p>After a second, she saw his shoulders start to shake, and realized that he was crying.</p><p>This was not what she had expected. Adiris had thought he would try to force her to open the gate, or come over and start whatever he was planning to do to her, but he wasn’t even looking at her now. Not even enough to be cautious. She wondered if that meant she had killed the other one.</p><p>For a few seconds the leader stayed like that, and Adiris watched him cry in silence, for the first time in a while completely lost in what to do herself, and then finally he released his grip a little and went back to cradling the body gently in his lap and looked over at again, face stained with tears now and eyes red, looking broken and hurt.</p><p>“Why?” asked the leader hopelessly, looking into her one remaining eye. A little anger in his voice, but mostly just full of despair and pain. “All he did was help you. Why would you do this to him? He didn’t do anything to you!” There was overwhelming anger in the voice then, and heart racing, she pulled back against the wall as much as she could in the face of it, no idea exactly what he had said, but very afraid of what she knew he would come over here to do. “We could have attacked you when you got sick, or run, or anything! And we had every right, because you’re a killer, and a monster, and you’ve done unthinkable things to us again and again for no reason! But we didn’t! We felt bad for you, and we tried to help! And you fucking—!” He choked up and lost the anger from his face and voice completely to a downpour of misery and pulled the body in his lap close to him again and turned away from her to hold it, and then eased it gently back down. “I’m so sorry, Quentin,” he said to the unmoving form, placing his hand against its cheek and stroking disheveled hair out of its face fondly, like the small act of comfort could help the real damage to heal, and then he began to cry again, like looking at his friend was unbearable. “Please don’t be dead. Please come back. You’re so strong—I know you can pull through.” The leader began crying harder, losing his ability to draw his emotions back in, words all coming out choked and in fragments, pleading with his unmoving companion. “But it’s just me—you’re stuck with just me.” He tried to smile at the body and broke again, shattered and miserable. “I don’t know what to do. I-I try, I always try so hard, and it’s never enough. I know you guys expect me to have a plan, and to know, and to figure it out, but most of the time I’m just trying to figure everything out as I go, and praying you all won’t notice. And I don’t know what to do this time—I don’t know how to help you! You’re barely breathing, and I know you’re not dead yet; you could wake up. I know there must be a right thing to do. There’s a way to help people hurt like this. But I don’t know what it is. So I’m just sitting here, useless, watching you die, because it’s me, and not Adam, or Claudette, or somebody who would have known how to save you. And it’s <em>not</em> too late.” He buried his head against the body’s chest, shaking. “It’s not, but it doesn’t even matter, because I’m just not good enough. I’m so sorry. Please come back. Please.”</p><p>Mourning. He was…mourning, she thought, because she’d killed his friend. And she was angry, and afraid, and hurt herself, and full of hate for both of them, but it was hard to look at that and not feel any guilt at all, or sympathy, as stupid as she knew it was to feel it, because the intensity of his misery was so overwhelming and consuming it had seeped into the air of the room itself. <em>Why haven’t you killed me? </em>she thought, watching him in the face of all that misery. Why wouldn’t he? Why wait? There was…no reason at all to not. She should never have woken back up at all. He would want vengeance, and there would be time to mourn after. There was no reason to wait at all. Unless. The…the only reason could possibly be to kill her slowly, while she was awake for it, maybe. But then…</p><p>“Why did you have to do this?” asked the leader hopelessly, swallowing hard to recover a little ability to talk and still gently supporting the body of his friend in his lap like a dead child as he turned his head to look at her again. “Why couldn’t you just let us go? All we wanted was to go home.”</p><p>Adiris looked back at him, a little of the anger that had been on her face disappearing unintentionally as she saw the medic’s face herself for the first time. His skin was still discolored a little, and he was perfectly still, and all around his neck were deep purple bruises and little cuts from her rings. He looked like a man who had been hung. She looked back at the leader, and felt confused and strange at the anger in his voice and on his face. Not the anger itself, but the kind of anger. He was speaking words the way she was hearing them in her own head, furious about what had been done to her. Like she had stabbed <em>him</em> in the back, or was going to peel off his skin for no reason.</p><p> “He just wanted to save you. I don’t understand,” said the leader, shaking his head at her and struggling to speak. “And now we’re all three fucked,” he added in despair, smiling in a way that was thoroughly hopeless and full of regret, and tilting his head up to look at the metal netted ceiling above him. After a second, he reached down, and took something from his pocket, and glanced back at her, holding it up, and she realized in horror she recognized it. “Because your key won’t let us out.”</p><p>Eyes wide and pulse racing, Adiris looked down automatically at her necklace and saw the key missing from its sheath, but there had been no real need to confirm—she <em>knew </em>that key. He must have tried to escape, then. And found out to his great displeasure that that was impossible, because key or no, the only person who could unlock that door was her—it was the way Nergal had designed it. The key would only turn for one of his priests, and no one else. <em>That’s why, </em>she thought, almost relieved, but not for the reason she had expected, <em>He left you alive to try to force you to open the door.</em></p><p>“Unless you open it. But I don’t think you’re gonna do it,” continued the leader quietly, pocketing the key again and shaking his head hopelessly at her. He had been holding her gaze almost the whole time, and she didn’t understand why he was doing this at all—she had no idea what he was saying, and he must know that. But he wasn’t yelling at her either, to get out anger. It was like…like listening to someone talk because they had to speak to someone, and you were the only person there. The way people who were deeply alone and distressed talked to statues and…</p><p>That thought hurt her and she didn’t like it, so she looked away and tried to stop the train of thought before it could really begin.</p><p>“I think you’d rather die than open that door,” said the leader quietly, “To even have a chance of forcing you to open that door, I’d have to beat the shit out of you, or try to torture you.” His voice sounded so miserable that Adiris turned to look at him again, and when he met her gaze, his eyes misted up. “And I could. I could do that. Maybe I should—maybe that’s the right thing to do, because you’re a monster, and if I don’t get away, I think I’ll die here. For real this time. And if I do, I’ll never be able to go back to my friends and help them get out, so I should try, I know I should, but. Fuck. I don’t want to do that. If I’m gonna have to die in the next couple hours, then fuck, I at least want to die as myself. I don’t want to torture somebody. I don’t even really want to hurt you. I should, and there’s probably something wrong with me, and it’s fucked up that I don’t, but I’m just so fucking confused. I should hate you. You…” He stopped for a second and looked down at the body in his lap and shut his eyes, trying to get his breathing back under control. “But I thought…” he continued finally, looking back over at her, “I thought you wanted to help us. Or something. I... I thought you were different. I thought…”</p><p>She had never seen someone like this before. She had seen the infidels miserable and afraid and dying, and trying to save each other in rituals. And she had seen people lose loved ones, and mourn, but it had never been like this. No one had ever talked to her like this, and she had never seen someone react this way to an enemy either. If they had killed one of her followers, she wouldn’t have waited for them to wake back up, she’d have killed them. Even trapped. Certainly she wouldn’t have done this. But he showed no signs of doing anything else. Just kept talking going, kept looking at his friend like he would do anything to bring him back, and at her like she was some kind of monster and he couldn’t even understand her. He looked so…</p><p><em>Surprised, </em>she realized slowly with an awful feeling in her chest. That was the emotion mixed in with all the others she had been struggling to place. But she knew that look, and she <em>knew </em>that she was right, the second she placed it, that was what that look was. <em>…You don’t know why I did this. </em></p><p>The thought was awful. How, <em>how </em>could he possibly not? They—they knew what Nergal was! They would know to rip plague from her body was blasphemy to a God of plague! …wouldn’t they? H-hadn’t they-been-been laughing? Or smug? She had thought they… Adiris tried frantically to replay her memories from before being struck, looking for what should have been there. <em>No. No, I…</em></p><p>“You let him bandage my leg,” said the leader hopelessly, turning his leg to show the stained red bandage there, “I thought you even felt bad for Quentin, when he was talking to you. I <em>really </em>thought you did. You weren’t like any of them have ever been to us before. I thought it meant something. I just don’t understand. Why would you do this?” He looked back at the purple bruises around the other boy’s throat, pained, and stroked his head again, trying to offer the body comfort that wasn’t really going to be able to reach it.</p><p>He looked dead. Adiris had assumed he was, but maybe… She-she hadn’t been <em>trying </em>to kill him, or, she, she had, but she hadn’t been trying-trying—it—she had been so angry. She had been <em>so</em> sure. But she hadn’t planned—hadn’t—it had all been so fast, and she had thought about snapping his neck, but she didn’t even <em>really </em>think she’d meant to strangle him to death. Just to hurt him. …Right? <em>…No. Wrong, </em>she thought, unable to look away from the bruises she’d left, <em>You wanted to do this. …Please have known what you did to me. You must have.</em></p><p>“He just wanted to help you,” said the leader, and as he said it, he gestured to the body, then his bandaged leg, and then to her, and Adiris stared at him in horror, because she was afraid she had understood that.</p><p><em>No, </em>she thought again, looking from the leader to the still features and horrible bruising on the medic. No, no, no—that was impossible! They had come to kill Nergal, they would know what he was, there was no way not to—they—they could not be stupid enough to just not have it occur that it would be blasphemy to cure his work, could they? …If. Gods, if he’d only meant to help her, and she… I-it was still blasphemy, and had to be sternly reprimanded, but she would never have hurt him like that for ignorance. <em>I didn’t know, </em>she thought, feeling sickened now and confused and overwhelmed by all of this at once. This was wrong, it had to be. It couldn’t—</p><p>“And you tried to kill him for that,” said the leader, “And now it’s over for all three of us. Because I can’t save Quentin, and I can’t get out, and you aren’t going to let us go. But I can’t sit here forever.” He had to stop a second to struggle to get emotions under control, and then forced himself to keep going, telling whatever he was saying in his tongue to Adiris because he had to talk and there was no one else there now to hear it. Quiet, and horribly sad in quiet and hopeless way, like someone reading their own death sentence aloud and giving in to the inevitability of the end they were about to face. “I’m gonna run out of time.” He pointed up to the mesh in the ceiling without looking at it. “Eventually, all those people out there will notice you’re gone, or the Entity will come, and sometime before that, I know you’re going to try to break free again. And eventually, you’re not gonna stop when I threaten you, and when that finally happens, I’m gonna have to kill you. And I don’t want to do that. I’ve never killed anyone—I’ve never even really hurt anybody until fifteen minutes ago, and I didn’t like how it felt. But I had to. I had to hurt you, and to gag you and tie you up, and I feel like shit, and it’s not fair, because you made me do this—you dragged us here and attacked him, and it was that or die. I never wanted <em>any </em>of this to happen. I just wanted to go home. But I still feel like shit, and it’s not even enough. It’s not even over. I think probably I could have killed you normally, in a fight, and I would have been okay after, and I should have done that when I had the chance, but I fucking didn’t. You stopped moving after the first hit, and I stopped. I was afraid to kill you like that. But now it’s gonna be so much worse, because you’re tied up, and defenseless, and awake, and I’m still gonna have to kill you, but this way I’m never get over that. Even if by some miracle I live. I’m gonna be fucked up inside for the rest of my life because I killed someone that couldn’t even fight back. And I’m scared of that. I hate it—I don’t want to do it. But I’m gonna have to. I just am. Because you’re gonna try to get free, and if you get free, we’re both dead. We don’t even stand a <em>chance</em> against you in a real fight. And I can’t let you hurt him again, and I don’t want to die, so as soon as you start trying, I’m gonna have to walk over there, and stand over somebody tied up and gagged on the floor, and beat your head in with a fucking rock until you quit moving, and I can’t get out of it. I just can’t.”</p><p>The leader was barely ever gesturing when he spoke, because he was holding his friend, and she had almost no idea what he was saying, but she could tell he was talking about her, and himself, and the body, and partway through he had looked at the door, and then the bloodied rock, and that had made her afraid again.</p><p>“And you know what the most fucked up part of it all is?” he asked her hopelessly, “It’s probably not even gonna matter. I have to do it, but I don’t think it’s gonna be enough. I think I’m gonna kill you, and I won’t be the same person ever again once I have, and then I’m gonna end up sitting in this fucking cage for hours and hours until finally your people come looking for you and see what we’ve done and come in and kill us, or the Entity beats them to it. And <em>all </em>this shit will have been for nothing. But it doesn’t matter, because I don’t <em>know </em>that’s how it’ll end, so I’m still gonna have to do all of it, because I have to try. Fuck…” He shut his eyes for a few seconds and just breathed, then looked back at her with the same sad and despairing and betrayed look he’d had before. “…You know, I keep hoping this is some kind of terrible dream, and I’m gonna wake up, but I’m not. None of us are.”</p><p>For a moment, he was silent, just watching her while she stared silently back, and then there was a groan. Shocked, Adiris looked down at what she had assumed was a dead body, while the leader did the same with a mixture of surprise and joy. And it moved. The medic—the boy she had thought she had killed—he stirred a little, and grimaced, eyes still shut, but very definitely alive.</p><p>“Hey! Hey—Quentin. Hang in there, okay?” said the leader hopefully, touching his face gently and trying to wake him, “Come on—you were almost awake. Please.”</p><p>The medic moaned and then slowly opened his eyes to little cracks and blinked a few times, then opened them and looked unsteadily up at his companion. “…Dwight?”</p><p>“Yeah,” answered the leader, looking more relieved than Adiris thought she had ever seen a human look before, and happy—so much she thought he might cry again from it, “How you feelin?”</p><p>“Uhm…bad, if I’m honest,” managed the medic, his voice rough and scratchy and very different than it had been before.</p><p>The sound of it made Adiris feel guilt, and her eyes went to the marks on his neck. She tried to tell herself that she didn’t know that they didn’t understand what they’d done—that she was guessing, and it was likely they had known full well how awful a thing it was to do, and that it didn’t even matter, because of who they were—tried to dredge back the awful dream and the memories it had been based on, and it worked a little—the horrors of the dream were fresh. But it didn’t work entirely, because she had known since the moment surprise had clicked as the thing on the leader’s face that she did not think either of them had understood what they’d done. Adiris turned her face away.</p><p>“My head feels like someone kicked it, and my throat feels like it got stepped on,” came the medic’s voice. He sounded weak, and confused—still not entirely awake. “Where am I?”</p><p>“Plague’s temple,” said the leader, and Adiris glanced back up, because she knew that first word—it was probably the only word in their language she <em>did </em>know, even if she didn’t know the precise meaning. It was what they called her in rituals if they saw her coming or were warning another, on the rare times that they spoke at all. They were talking about her. When she looked, though, they weren’t <em>looking </em>at her. They were still just looking at each other. “You remember coming here?”</p><p>“Yeah,” answered the medic tiredly, “I remember. Did anything happen after she choked me?”</p><p>That must have been a question, because the leader shook his head. “Not really. It’s been maybe fifteen minutes.”</p><p>“Oh,” answered the medic, “Really? It feels like a lot longer to me. Like hours maybe. I thought I lost time. I guess I…did, kind of, just not—w-wait, I took <em>fifteen </em>minutes to wake up?”</p><p>The leader nodded again.</p><p>“Am I dead—I mean—dying?” asked the medic worriedly. He raised a shaky hand to his neck and winced.</p><p>“Stop—don’t do that,” said the leader gently, moving his hand away, “You’re gonna make it worse. Just lay down for a couple more minutes, okay? You’re not dying. I was pretty worried you weren’t waking up, but you seem okay now. I’m sure you’ll be fine with some rest. Just take it easy.”</p><p>“Okay,” agreed the medic tiredly, shutting his eyes for a second and letting out a shaky breath. His eyes opened again almost immediately, a confused and worried look on his face. “Wait. What happened? Are we okay? Are <em>you</em> okay? I mean, I guess she decided not to kill me, but-“</p><p>“—Eehh,” said the leader like he was breaking bad news, glancing over towards her.</p><p>The medic followed his glance and saw Adiris for the first time and his eyes widened.</p><p>With the look, she immediately felt backed into a corner, and angry and afraid and ashamed, and most of those feelings were for completely unrelated reasons, so she didn’t know which one to listen to, but for some reason she very much didn’t want to look back at him at all, and she had to make herself do it.</p><p>“D-did you do that?” asked the medic, glancing back at the leader, “That’s stupid—no one else could have. <em>How </em>did you…?”</p><p>“I hit her with a rock,” said the leader, “I’m sorry—I should have attacked her the second she grabbed you. She wouldn’t have been able to hurt you so bad. I just—I thought I could get her to let go; I didn’t think she would do that, I-I panicked-”</p><p>“—No, it’s okay,” said the medic reassuringly, putting his hand on his friend’s, “I probably would have done the same thing. I did a shit job fighting back too, I was so surprised. Do you know why she did it?” He glanced back at Adiris again, and he looked more confused and worried than before. “She was <em>furious</em>, but I-I don’t know what I did wrong. I didn’t say anything. And she wasn’t mad at you. So…it can only be that I healed her, right?”</p><p>“…I guess,” agreed the leader hopelessly, glancing at Adiris himself, much the same way, like he was tired and sad about her existence, “I don’t know either, but if it’s not that, I have no idea why you, or why right then. That doesn’t make sense though. You <em>healed</em> her. Usually even with someone pretty shitty, that kind of has the opposite effect.”</p><p>“Yeah, you’d think so,” said the medic.</p><p>“You’d hope so,” said the leader, smiling at him. Trying to get him to smile, or laugh, Adiris thought from the look on his face and the worry still behind his eyes, because he was still afraid his friend was not really okay and he needed to see him smile, and even with no idea what they were saying, it all made her feel so much worse. The attempt worked, and the medic smiled back at him weakly, but his skin still hadn’t completely gone back to its original shade, and it was such a weak smile. It hurt to see it.</p><p>“But you have no idea?” asked the medic.</p><p>The leader shook his head, and the medic nodded thoughtfully and then winced and stopped because the motion hurt him. Both boys were quiet for a moment after that. The medic took in the room, looked at her again for a long couple of seconds nervously, like he thought direct eye contact might give her the strength to rip through the bars and come finish what she’d started, and then finally back at his friend. “What are we gonna do?”</p><p>“I don’t know,” said the leader quietly. He let out a slow breath. “I’m working on it, but it’s not great. I got her key when she was still out, but it won’t work for me. I tried it about a hundred times. It goes in, but it does nothing. I think somehow it’s set up to only work for her. When she used it to open the door before, it hummed, you remember? Like—vibrated—like a hatch key almost.”</p><p>The medic nodded.</p><p>“It doesn’t do anything for me. I tried dragging her over and moving her hand for her, but that didn’t work either. It’s probably something you have to channel, so we’re fucked on that front,” he continued, “And she’s <em>definitely </em>not opening the door for us.”</p><p>“Okay,” said the medic, thinking, “Where does that leave us?”</p><p>For a moment, the leader didn’t answer. Just looked ahead at nothing, then he glanced at Adiris, and finally back at his friend. “Best guess? We try to break down one of the stone sections of the wall, or I stand on the alter and you get on my shoulders and we see if there’s any way to cut through the grate up there. If we fail, eventually either those people she talked to outside come find us, or the Entity does, and if it’s her people, we try to fight. If it’s the Entity, I guess we hope it eventually takes us back to the campfire after…what I’m sure will be a horrible experience for messing with its shit. Even though this time we <em>actually </em>didn’t mean to <em>at all. </em>But uh. That’s where I’m at.”</p><p>“…And her?” asked the medic, glancing over at Adiris.</p><p>The leader followed his gaze and let his eyes settle on her too, and he looked serious, and sad, and almost sorry for a moment when he met her eyes, and she felt ice in the pit of her stomach. “We leave her alone until she starts trying to break free. And when she does, and threatening her won’t get her to stop anymore, you turn around, and I go over there and kill her with that rock as quick as I can before she gets free.”</p><p>For a long couple of seconds, the medic just looked up at his leader, like whatever he’d just heard him say had hurt. “…I can do it.”</p><p>“Quentin,” said the leader.</p><p>“It’s my fault this happened,” said the medic, sad and sorry but also firm, “I know I don’t want to do it, but you don’t want to do it either, and if one of us does it, it should be me. <em>I’m </em>the one who went to the church to pray, <em>I’m </em>the one who wouldn’t go back to camp, and <em>I’m </em>the one that pissed her off and got us here, with her tied to a wall in a situation we can’t back out of. If I hadn’t healed her, we wouldn’t be here. If I hadn’t come, you might be doing okay alone, because I wouldn’t have fucked it up. If I had just stayed with the group, none of this ever would have happened at all. It should be me.”</p><p>“Quentin, that’s not fair,” said the leader in distress, “Us being here is the Plague’s fault, and neither of us had any idea she was going to attack you for helping her—if I was the one who <em>had </em>healing powers, I’d have done the same thing. You couldn’t <em>know </em>going to the Chapel would be dangerous—we were there for hours this afternoon, and nothing went wrong. Besides, if you want to point fingers where they don’t go, I can play that as well as you can. <em>I’m </em>the one she caught—if I’d run better, you wouldn’t have had to come back for me. <em>I</em> came to the chapel to make sure you were safe and fucked up keeping watch more than should be humanly <em>possible, </em>and if <em>I’d</em> just hit her harder with that rock, she’d be dead already, and neither of us would be having to go over to some poor fucking girl in her 20s tied to a gate and beat her to death with a rock.”</p><p>The medic let out a breath, unhappy about whatever the leader had just said. They were <em>definitely </em>talking about her, because they kept looking over, and she’d heard her name again, and it was incredibly distressing to know none of what was being said even though she could hear all of it.</p><p>“Okay, then we’ll flip a coin,” offered the medic, “But for the record, none of that’s your fault. Especially not…finishing her off.” He glanced over at Adiris again and looked unhappy, almost pitying, which Adiris didn’t think was a way <em>anyone </em>had ever looked at her before, and she had no idea how to process. “…Fuck. Fuck—are you sure?” He turned back to the leader. “There’s no other way?”</p><p>“I don’t know,” said the leader, “I don’t want to kill her either, but I’m sure she’s mad. I tied her to a gate, and knocked her out, and gagged her with my tie. She’s pissed as fuck—she tried to come kill me when she woke up, and I had to threaten her to get her to stay down. I don’t think even if we went over and begged on our knees and untied her it would be enough to make her be merciful. Besides, she probably still wants to kill you for whatever the fuck insane reason she had for trying in the first place.”</p><p>“…Yeah.” The medic let out a breath and looked over at her again.</p><p>She met his eyes and tried to look angry, because she was afraid to look anything else, but instead of seeming intimidated or angry too, he returned the look so fucking sadly she was taken aback by it.</p><p>“I wish we could explain,” said the medic, glancing up at his friend, “I wish we could just <em>talk</em>—I thought. I mean. I <em>really </em>thought she…”</p><p>“I did too,” said the leader quietly, “I <em>really</em> think she said she was gonna let us go. I don’t know why she wanted to bring us here to get us to worship the Entity, but I don’t think she was just fucking with us. She looked at me like she was…I don’t know—betrayed almost, when she woke up like that. I mean, she was furious, but not <em>just </em>furious. Like she couldn’t believe I’d been so terrible as to do it. I know this is so much credit to be giving a killer—"</p><p>“—But it all feels wrong,” agreed the medic sadly, “Just look at her.”</p><p>Both young men turned their full attention on her suddenly, and not just glancing over or meeting her gaze like before, but studying her—all of her—scrutinizingly. And she immediately felt incredibly uncomfortable and nervous, because she wasn’t supposed to be seen like this by anyone at all. Somehow through everything happening, she hadn’t really registered until that moment, thinking about how she appeared, that her decorative chains were missing from her field of vision, and there was a weight gone from her head, and a half-second later, that her headdress was <em>gone</em>. She felt her heart lurch and looked for it frantically with the awful realization, and saw it almost immediately—laying over in a corner about fifteen feet away, by a pile of vomit—back where she’d been knocked out originally before being dragged here, to the door. Discarded, lying on its side, forgotten. Taken away. The indignity and the shame of that—of even having part of her attire—the most <em>sacred </em>part of her attire—just cast aside and left on the ground like it was nothing—it filled her with rage at them again and hurt, but the second she looked at them to turn the force of that rage in their direction, she saw them both glance back from it too, following her motion and watching the expression on her face with confusion and concern that seemed so overwhelmingly genuine that the anger just turned into despair. <em>They don’t know. They don’t understand, and they didn’t before—the boy really didn’t know what he was doing. They are stupid, and uneducated, like children—unbelievably so. How far away can they come from that they do not as adults understand even basic concepts of religion? What raised you to know <strong>nothing </strong>about tradition, or practice. Do you have nothing sacred in your land—no rituals at all? How can two grown men know so little? <strong>How</strong> is that possible—how can you not understand the terrible things you do? It isn’t fair. It shouldn’t be <strong>possible </strong>for you not to know. I knew before I was ten. </em>And what could she do about that? There was so much to explain, and they were not going to listen to her now—even if she had been free to speak or move or <em>try </em>to talk to them. It was so hopeless.</p><p>“She’s so fucked up,” said the medic miserably, “I don’t think I ever really knew before. I mean—I knew she was sick, but. God. How is she even <em>alive? </em>She’s got <em>so many tumors</em>. He skin’s just fucking gone. Her hair’s almost all fallen out, her hands and feet have gone all black and dead, and half her face is just <em>missing</em>. I’ve never <em>ever </em>seen somebody this sick. How is she alive like that? Fuck—it has to be agony to move. It has to be agony just to exist. What the fuck made her like this.”</p><p>“I feel shitty for caring, after everything she’s done to us, but it’s hard not to pity her,” agreed the leader quietly, eyes running along Adiris’ head.</p><p>She was acutely aware of the emotion in both their expressions. It was pity, stronger than before, and at first she had been just surprised, but she could tell now that she did not like it. Pity wasn’t sympathy, or empathy, or compassion. It only came from a place of superiority, looking down at something weaker and more broken than yourself, and no one was superior to her anymore—she was a high priestess—she was stronger than them, and more important, and they had no right to look at her like that. She wasn’t a thing to pity! Not to anyone! They were infidels, and already dead, just refusing to let go at the mouth of Erṣetu—how <em>dare </em>they look at her like she was a starving, mangey dog they might throw a scrap of bread to. And the more they did it, the worse she felt. One of them glanced at her scalp, and she was suddenly remembering the little bits of black hair that were still there, and the overwhelming baldness between those patches, and felt horrible, and humiliated, and debased by what these men had done to her, and looked away. She wanted to cover herself up—to get the headdress back and wear it again—to lash out at them for looking at her like this, for putting her here, for treating her like a thing at best to be pitied. <em>I am not that. I am not. I should not be ashamed at all, </em>she told herself desperately, because it was true—she was not a servant anymore, she was a priestess, chosen by hand by a God, and the way she looked was a part of the sickness and a mark of her God, and she was honored to carry it and be a sacrifice to him herself. It was a noble thing. But she could not force other people to see it that way, and the looks hurt her. She still did not like to look at herself, even, because she looked <em>so </em>different now, and it was hard to remember this was a blessing when she did, and that made her feel weak and faithless. So she just almost never did it. It was better not to remember. What did it matter anyway? <em>Stop looking at me, </em>she thought, keeping her head turned away as much as she could, <em>Just leave me alone. What more do you want?</em></p><p>“How old do you think she is? You said 20s…? Somehow I always thought she was a lot older, I guess because she’s so tall, but up close she looks different than I thought. A lot younger, maybe even like Kate’s age, or Laurie’s. …The…the part of her face she still has does, anyway,” came the medic’s voice almost miserably.</p><p>“I guess I don’t know. I thought 20s, mid-20s after seeing her face up close, but with the…with her skin how it is, it’s hard to tell. Could be anywhere from twenty-two to thirty-two,” answered the leader.</p><p>“So, she’s our age,” said the medic.</p><p>“…Yeah,” said the leader quietly.</p><p>For a few seconds they were quiet. And when they stayed that way, Adiris finally turned her head back to look at them again. She didn’t want to, because she didn’t want to look at them at all, but if she didn’t, she would have no idea if one of them came over to hurt her, and that anxiety had started very quickly to get even worse than the urge not to look. Both men were sort of staring into space in her general direction when she turned, but they refocused on her when they sensed movement, and she met the leader’s eyes and he held her gaze like he didn’t want to, but felt like it would be wrong to look away. His eyes seemed so serious, and sad, and a little bit dead to her—like he was dreading something.</p><p>“…I don’t want to kill her,” said the medic hopelessly, glancing up at the leader, “But there’s no way out of it, is there?”</p><p>The leader met his gaze and shook his head, then looked away.</p><p>“Fuck,” whispered the medic, looking back at her.</p><p>“…How are you feeling? Any better?” asked the leader after a second.</p><p>“Yeah—sorry—I think I can sit up okay now,” said the medic, broken out of a train of thought. He kind of awkwardly got up a little and moved out of his friend’s lap to sit beside him instead, and immediately winced hallway through the motion and stopped with his eyes shut.</p><p>“You okay?” asked the leader worriedly, putting a hand on his shoulder.</p><p>“Yeah—yeah. I’m okay. Moving hurts my head,” said the medic, forcing himself to open his eyes, and easing back against the alter for support. He let out a shaky breath and turned to his friend then and tried to give him a reassuring smile. “I’m okay, though. I promise.”</p><p>“Good. Just, take it easy, okay?” said the leader.</p><p>The medic smiled at him. “Okay.” He glanced to the side at the large rock sitting by him, the one with blood on it the leader had used to hit her before. “Uh. You…you think the best plan is to wait, right? Until she tries to break out, before we have to—” He gestured at the rock and then glanced over at her.</p><p>Adiris stared back at him in horror and felt her pulse speed up. She tried to move away, but she was already back against a wall and there was nowhere to go, and all she did was smack her head against it, which sent waves of pain down her spine and brought back the headache from being hit before with a vengeance. All this time, she knew they had been talking about her, but she’d had no idea what was being said, but that? That could <em>only</em> mean one thing.</p><p>“Wait! It’s okay,” called the medic, holding up a hand towards her, “I didn’t mean anything—I don’t want to hurt you!”</p><p>“Shit,” said the leader, shifting his weight to get to his feet.</p><p><em>He’s going to come over.</em> She was suddenly reliving parts of the dream. Seeing people around her, being unable to move her wrists, hearing the screams that just wouldn’t end. “You wouldn’t dare!” she tried to shout, but it came out garbled through the gag, and she stopped partway, because it wouldn’t matter. They wouldn’t know what she was saying at all—she <em>couldn’t </em>threaten them with Nergal’s wrath. And she couldn’t call him to come. She tried, desperate, calling it as best she could through the gag, but even <em>she</em> couldn’t tell what the word was from the sound of it through the cloth, and she watched in despair as after her sixth try, still nothing happened. <em>No. </em></p><p>“Stop, please,” said the medic to her, trying to make it to his feet too.</p><p>“Someone’s going to hear her,” said the leader, and she saw him reach for the stone.</p><p>Overcome with fear and despair, Adiris tried to rip at the chains again frantically, knowing her only chance was to get them off before one of them reached her, but he’d tied it well, and it wasn’t coming—not fast enough—<em>fuck—he’ll—</em>She looked over hurriedly, trying to see how fast they would come for her. The leader had the rock already and was turning to face her, the medic at his side.</p><p>“Fuck—I-I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to—I didn’t think she’d,” said the medic despairingly, looking from her to his leader, “Do you think we can calm her down?”</p><p>“I don’t know,” said the leader, raising the stone and taking a step towards her, “I’ll try. She needs to shut up.”</p><p><em>No. </em>Adiris looked up into his face in a panic and started frantically to rip at the chains with her rings, going as fast as she could and tearing at the knots with so much force it made her fingers bleed. She had seen people die to stoning twice in her life, and it was not a fast death at all.</p><p>“Stop!” ordered the leader, raising the bloody stone with both hands.</p><p>Pretty sure she knew what that meant from the tone of his voice, Adiris froze and looked back at him, breathing raggedly through the gag and meeting his gaze with wide eyes. He watched her for a second, and she kept still, and he slowly lowered the stone, looking relieved. <em>Not yet, </em>she thought, shakily relieved herself, staying still. And then the full meaning of that thought really sunk in. And she realized in its completeness for the first time since waking up that they were <em>going </em>to kill her. It was so obvious and inescapable, she didn’t know why she hadn’t seen it so completely as soon as she woke up in chains. She had known it might happen, but it was not a might, it was a fact. There was no other outcome here. They could not open the door without her, and she was a threat, so they would either kill her, or try to torture her until she opened the door. There was no third, more favorable outcome. Not unless she freed herself. Waiting for them to act and following orders was only going to slow it down, not save her. There was no chance they were going to do anything else. <em>They can’t, </em>she realized with a sinking feeling. Because they were trapped here. And she could not let them go, and risk them hurting her followers to save herself. So there were only two outcomes. Either she broke free and saved herself, or sooner or later, but not much later, she was <em>going </em>to die. And the weight of that made her feel like she had been cast into the ocean with stones chained to her ankles. <em>I don’t even know if they’ll kill me, </em>she thought hopelessly, watching the leader keeping his eyes on her, and then slowly setting the stone back down, <em>If they’re smart, they’ll torture me instead. Because it’s their only chance to escape.</em></p><p>She shut her eyes, feeling even sicker than she was used to, and so alone. <em>How </em>had this happened? How had she gotten herself in this position? Even after everything, all her power, all her experience, high priestess to a God. It meant nothing. And she was alone, again, again at the mercy of people who were not going to give it. But she had been here before, and made it through out luck or fate or something. Maybe she could again. Maybe, if she was slow. If she tried to work at the knots when they were not looking.</p><p><em>I will not just give up. I’m not ready to die! Not like this. </em>She opened her eyes again and looked at the knots, trying to control her fear. <em>Please Nergal, give me strength. I am sorry—I will not disappoint you again. Please help me.</em></p><p>“I’m sorry,” said the medic, sitting down again unsteadily and then leaning forward on his knees and burning half his face in his arms, “I should have been more careful.” He watched Adiris for a couple of seconds over his arms, and he suddenly went from looking sad to looking downright sick with the emotion. <em>Why—what did he—what does that mean? Why would he-</em> “Her fingers are bleeding.”</p><p>The leader glanced over at her in surprise, and down at her hands, and Adiris followed their glances and looked at the raw skin and blood dripping onto the floor, afraid he had seen her studying the knots and somehow already knew what she was planning to try.</p><p>“She tore them up. Because she knows we’re gonna kill her no matter what, and she’s desperate.” He looked at her miserably and then his expression changed to something like realization instead and he looked quickly to the leader. “She’s scared. Because she knows we won’t stop even if she begs. I know that look.”</p><p>“…Yeah, me too,” said the leader, looking a little surprised and then glancing back at Adiris. The expression changed to unhappiness. “…We would, though.”</p><p>“Would? –Oh, stop?” asked the medic. The leader nodded. “Yeah,” said the medic like he was trying to be reassuring, “I know. That’s not what I’m trying to say—I’m saying that I’m pretty sure she thinks we wouldn’t.”</p><p>“I think you’re right,” said the leader slowly, confused, “What are you…?”</p><p>“Look at her,” said the medic quickly, gesturing to Adiris, “She’s <em>sacred. </em>I mean, that’s normal, but—when I woke up, she was angry. And I thought, because she had just tried to kill me, and you hit her and tied her up, that she’d be furious, and maybe she is, but she’s not that the most—she’s <em>scared.</em>”</p><p>The leader glanced back at Adiris and his expression changed. Surprise, and then almost excitement, and he quickly turned back to the medic and started to talk fast. “I think you’re right. Do you think that means we might actually have a shot? If she was just angry, like before—like I thought she would stay, there’d be nothing we could do to get through to her, but if she’s scared now, we might have a chance! If we can get her to understand we don’t <em>want </em>to hurt her, and won’t do it if she doesn’t try to escape and kill us, she might <em>stop. </em>We might not have to kill her at all! Do you think? Would you stop, if you were her?”</p><p>“I hope so, but I-I guess I don’t know what she thinks like,” answered the medic, talking fast too and glancing between Adiris and his leader, “I think I would. I mean, I don’t know what anybody thinks like to be able to hunt us and kill us all the time in trials. I don’t think most of these killers would ever listen at all. But she <em>was </em>okay to us earlier, and I think you were right, and she meant that. So. So if it’s complicated? If—like, if it was me, and I—I don’t know—I got possessed or something, and couldn’t <em>not </em>hunt you in trials, then bumped into a few of you outside one and ended up like she is right now, I think I’d listen—I’d try to talk. Because I’d know you guys weren’t like us—you know, you’re normal people, not serial killers, so you might be merciful. I might still try to get free if I wasn’t sure you’d really let me go though, and definitely if I was worried you’d hurt somebody else like all those people she’s got upstairs, though, so that’s not gonna help us, but, I don’t think having uh—I don’t know what they were—friends? Uh, would for sure mean I <em>wouldn’t</em> listen. I guess it’d all just depend on if I believed you or not. But we have a shot—I think. And we don’t lose anything by trying!”</p><p>“No, we don’t. And if there’s even a slim chance we could get through, I think we <em>have</em> to,” agreed the leader readily, “I’m just trying to figure out the best way to try to talk to her at all. God, the fucking language barrier’s such a problem, and I don’t think charades is gonna cut it.” He glanced to the side, thinking, and then his eyes widened. “Oh wait—shit—I actually have an idea. This might work.”</p><p>“Really?” said the medic excitedly, “Thank God—I knew you’d think of something—you always do.”</p><p>“Don’t jinx me,” pleaded the leader, giving him a kind of a smile as he took the little booklet he kept out of his pocket, “Okay. Uhm. How to…Okay. Okay, uh, I’m gonna try to get closer to her without flipping her out. Can you walk?”</p><p>“Yeah,” assured the medic.</p><p>“Okay, then just come behind me, and try to tell me if I’m doing an okay or horrible job communicating—I’m gonna try drawing some stuff out. Pictures are <em>fairly</em> universal, and it’s gonna at least be better than charades,” said the leader.</p><p>“That’s a really good idea,” said the medic, looking surprised and impressed, “Okay—yeah. Let’s do it.”</p><p>The leader glanced back at Adiris and when she met his gaze, he held a hand out towards her palm-out and stood up slowly, and she kept her eyes fixed on him as he made it to his feet. “Okay,” said the leader gently, still holding her gaze and raising both hands reassuringly towards her now, “It’s okay. I’m not gonna hurt you. I’m just gonna come over a little bit closer.” He took a careful step towards her, and Adiris felt her heart lurch.</p><p><em>He’s lying, </em>she thought, not trusting the gesture of peace or tone of his voice at all, and she shook her head at him while trying to pull back towards the gate until she was as pressed up against it as she could be, <em>Stay away from me.</em></p><p>“I know,” continued the leader, taking a second cautious step, hands still up and holding her gaze, moving slow and talking like you might speak to a scared animal or frightened child, “I know I hurt you, and tied you up, and threatened to do it again, but I’m unarmed, see? No weapons. I just want to talk.”</p><p>She stayed perfectly still, huge eye fixed on him. He wasn’t stopping. He wasn’t stopping, and the other one was coming too. <em>Fuck, they aren’t waiting. They’re finished waiting to do this. I— </em>There was no way. She wasn’t going to get the chains fast enough. <em>I can try. I. </em>“Stop,” she tried through the gag, but the sound came out as just sound with no shape, and she shook her head again.</p><p>“It’s okay,” said the leader, and he took a third step.</p><p><em>No. </em>She felt herself despair, and then despair gave way to panic, and in a surge of adrenaline and desperation, she turned and tore frantically at the chains, pulling on knots and screaming as loudly as she could through the gag, trying to attract <em>someone’s </em>attention.</p><p>“No, no, no, no, no—stop! Please stop!” she heard the leader calling urgently from where he was, now far too close to her, but she didn’t even look. Just kept going. <em>Come free! Please!</em></p><p>“Okay, okay—I’ll stop—I stopped—look—look at me, please. See? I’m taking a step back. Plague! Please—please stop,” she heard him keep calling to her. Shaking, Adiris ripped at the golden chain with her rings and refused to turn. She had no idea why he wasn’t here with the stone already, but either she would be free in time or he would be there and kill her, and she didn’t care to see that sight coming before it hit her. Realizing the knots weren’t going to come free without real work, Adiris started just jerking her wrists with all her might, still shouting—trying to snap the chain, snap the bars, snap the bones in her hand even—anything to let her get free. There were pounding footsteps then as the infidels bolted for her like she had expected, and she didn’t look, didn’t quit trying until the last second, when she saw a shoe in her peripheral and knew they were right on top of her, and seeing it was really over this time, Adiris shut her eyes and recoiled against the wall, turning her head away since she couldn’t raise her arms to shield it, and braced.</p><p>Nothing hit her.</p><p>She waited, breathing raggedly with her eyes shut, ears straining for sound, and no blow came. Nothing did. <em>Why—why are you waiting? </em>she thought desperately, eyes still squeezed shut, <em>Do you just want me to look at you when you do it so badly?</em></p><p>But there was nothing, still. Nothing but silence. And then slowly, finally, she heard a voice. Close—coming from almost right on top of her.</p><p>“Okay,” it said calmingly, voice kept steady and quiet, “It’s okay.” There was the sound of movement and bodies shifting, and slowly, Adiris forced herself to open her eyes and look.</p><p>The boys were in melee distance now. The leader perhaps half a foot away, the medic just behind him and at his side. They had sat down, and the leader was still watching her, still with his hands up. Slowly, very slowly, Adiris lifted her head to look at him, feeling overwhelming amounts of hate and anger and fear and confusion, but all so much that it was almost like she wasn’t really feeling them now at all—like her body had hit the maximum saturation possible on emotions, and was operating with them only in the background now because it couldn’t take it anymore.</p><p>“It’s okay,” said the leader again, still holding his palms out towards her, and he smiled at her gently.</p><p><em>What? –Why—? He cannot…mean that <strong>at all. </strong>There is… </em>It. It seemed like the only reason he could have to try to seem non-threatening at this point would be in a mocking way, to taunt her, but he was not laughing, and it had not been that kind of a smile.</p><p>“I just wanna talk,” continued the leader, pointing to himself, and then his mouth as he spoke, then indicating her.</p><p><em>He wants to talk? </em>That would mean he was going to ask her to open the door, then. And that could make sense, she realized, heart sinking. It would make sense to do it like this—to try without violence first. But she could not open it for them and risk them hurting her people, so the use of force wasn’t going to be very far behind.</p><p>“Okay,” said the leader. He let out a breath slowly and opened his little booklet, then readied his pen. “Oh—I’m sorry. I don’t think either of us ever introduced ourselves, did we?”</p><p>He glanced at the medic, and the medic shook his head. “She didn’t either. Uh. I mean, I think she didn’t. I guess I can’t know.”</p><p>“Right,” said the leader, facing Adiris again. He pointed to himself. “I’m <em>Dwight. </em>That’s <em>Quentin.</em>” The leader indicated the medic, and then repeated the motions and words a few times. “Dwight. Quentin. Dwight. Quentin. Okay?” He nodded hopefully.</p><p>Adiris didn’t respond. She knew what that had meant, but she had no idea <em>how </em>to respond to it, or why he was telling her their names <em>now </em>of all times, and she couldn’t talk anyway, so she just looked from one to the other.</p><p>“She’s hurt,” said the medic, eyes on Adiris, “I mean—I know you hit her, but her head’s still bleeding.”</p><p>“Fuck—is it?” asked the leader worriedly, looking from him to her—<em>No, </em>she realized, not to her. To the place on her head that was still aching from where he’d hit her. “I-I didn’t think I—how has it not stopped? I only hit her once. I didn’t…think I hit her that hard.”</p><p>“I don’t think it was you,” said the medic, “If you hit deep enough to make a normal headwound keep bleeding, she’d probably be dead. I think it’s just her skin, or her blood’s ability to coagulate. I think it’s just not…stopping on its own. Because of whatever’s wrong with her.”</p><p>“Oh,” said the leader, looking relieved, “does it look bad to you?”</p><p>“I can’t tell from here with all the tissue loss,” said the medic. He scooted a little forward and started to reach an arm out towards Adiris’ head. “Can I—”</p><p>The second one of them went to grab her, she recoiled again, flashing hatred and desperation with the eye she still had, and breathing fast.</p><p>“Okay,” said the medic quickly, drawing his hand back and looking guilty, “Sorry. I’ll…” He let out a breath and looked at the leader.</p><p><em>He gave up so easily? </em>That surprised her, but it was good at least. Maybe they would try to talk more before resulting to violence, and maybe if she had enough time, she might be able to get free, or Nergal might come to send her to a ritual and see what was happening. It wasn’t good odds, but she wasn’t ready to give up yet, so she was clinging to them.</p><p>“It’s okay,” said the leader to her coaxingly, still smiling a little, which was incredibly unnerving in this situation, no matter what kind of a smile it was. “We won’t touch you, then. Okay.” He cleared his throat and opened the little booklet and started to draw, talking while he did. “So, I’m not an artist, and this isn’t gonna be great. I would kill to have Jeff here right now. But since you definitely don’t understand us, and I don’t even know what language you’re speaking, I think we gotta find a better way, and this is the best I’ve got. So. Bear with me, please. Okay, you see this? This, is me.” He turned sideways and held the booklet up so they could both see it, and pointed from himself to a little human figure he had drawn. “Dwight. Yeah?”</p><p><em>What on earth is he doing? </em>thought Adiris in overwhelming confusion, looking at the picture just the same. Drawing made sense, if they were going to try to ask her to open the door, and couldn’t talk—although she would have expected them to go for just attempting to open it themselves as a pantomime communication. The thing on the paper didn’t seem to have <em>anything </em>to do with that though, so she had no idea what the point of it <em>was. </em>It was a simple drawing. Three human figures, and a house behind them. One human curvy with longer hair, two drawn like stick people—the smaller of which he had indicated just now was himself, and given glasses like the ones he wore, and hair that puffed up in the front like his did. The other two were bigger, and had their arms around him, and they were all smiling. <em>A family, </em>thought Adiris, looking from the picture to him and understanding what it was, but not why, and feeling strangely sad about it regardless. It must be nice to remember them in a way he would draw them like that.</p><p>“This is my home. My mom, my dad, and me,” continued the leader, indicating parts of the drawing as he went. He seemed to recognize some amount of understanding in Adiris’ expression, and looking a little hopeful about it, he hurried to add more to the picture, and kept narrating as he went—talking slowly and with pauses between words to be able to let his drawings keep up. “We were happy. See?” He had drawn a smiling face above the family, and then mimicked the expression himself, trying to help assign the visible emotion to the symbol on the page. “I worked at an office.” He indicated himself again, and a hastily doodled ‘him’ on the page, sitting in a little chair at a table and writing something, she thought. There were hastily scrawled other people doing the same around him.</p><p>
  <em>A scribe? He was a scribe, or something. …Or. …That could be jewelry making. Something small, and precise.</em>
</p><p>“One day,” continued the leader, offering no further explanation of his vocation and plowing right along, “My boss,” he tapped a stick person he had drawn much bigger than everyone else working at the little tables, and then drew him again, standing by a campfire, with many other people including himself, “took us out camping. We hung out, we had fun. Told stories, drank. It was okay.” The boy added tents to the scene and smiling and some people with open mouths, talking. Drew some drinking, or eating. Drew a flask of something she was fairly sure was wine and circled it. “I? Drank a lot of moonshine.” He indicated himself, and then the bottle of alcohol, then drew stick person him drinking it. “Then I passed out.” The leader drew himself asleep by the fire. “Still happy. Headache, but happy,” he added, putting a smile above the campfire scene.</p><p><em>What is this? </em>thought Adiris again, kind of fascinated in spite of it all. Why tell her, and why tell her <em>this </em>part of it? And why had a scribe or a jewelry maker, a weaver maybe, ended up leading the remains of their army?</p><p>“Then, the next day, I woke up,” continued the leader, drawing himself sitting up by the fire, then standing. “Everyone else was gone.” He drew people around him, then shook his head and crossed them out. “They…left me.” The boy added people walking away, arrows indicating the direction, leaving the campfire. “I was confused,” he continued, glancing up and making eye contact with her for a moment and giving her a lost look and a shrug, then pointing to the drawing of him alone at the fire and repeating it. “I tried to go home.” He indicated himself, then drew an arrow all the way back to the house with his parents. “But I didn’t make it.” The boy glanced at her and looked sad and shook his head, then crossed the arrow out.</p><p>Adiris looked from him to the drawing and back, trying to understand his meaning. <em>Didn’t go home? Or couldn’t? </em>Couldn’t, she thought, because he looked sad and grave, drawing again now. But why?</p><p>“I started to go home,” he continued, drawing himself, then a bunch of trees, and a reproduction of the home house on the far side of the woods with a smiley face above it, and an arrow showing his route through the woods to home. Then, halfway through the trees, he scratched out the line leading home and put an X in the middle of the trees instead. “And part way, all this fog appeared. I didn’t know where I was, and I was scared.” He drew himself again, a new picture, standing alone in the middle of some trees, with smoke or fog all around him, and his face afraid—the drawing version of him with its arms around itself. “Then it got me.” The leader himself looked sad, sitting there in reality, looking at the page, and hesitated a second, then shook himself and kept going. Slowly, he drew the sky above him opening up and… <em>Nergal.</em></p><p>She realized it in something a little like horror. He was drawing Nergal—<em>exactly</em> the way he always appeared to her—drawing him as a cloud of darkness in the sky, with talons like thorns. And the Nergal in the drawing grabbed the drawing Dwight, and dragged him up into the sky while the boy in the picture screamed. <em>No. What the fuck is this? What is he—Why would he lie? He <strong>must </strong>know that I know—there’s no way he’d think I’m stupid enough to—</em></p><p>“The Entity,” Dwight tapped the drawing of Nergal, “Took me. To here.” He gestured broadly to the room as a whole. “I didn’t know what was going on.” Again, he drew himself looking confused and scared, in the middle of a field with a building behind it—she thought maybe she recognized the shape, from ritual grounds here. “There were monsters here. And one of them hunted me down and killed me on a hook. And I died.” Carefully, the boy drew a servant of Nergal’s she recognized even from the crude sketch—a large man with metal lodged in his shoulder and a mask with smiling teeth. Drew the man chasing him and stabbing him in the back. Drew himself crying, then thrown up on one of the ritual hooks, then Nergal collecting his sacrifice. Then, finally, he drew himself laying on the ground with his eyes crossed out and drew a crude skull above that. “It was terrifying,” he told her, holding her gaze for a second and looking very grave and serious and sad. He glanced back at the skull and tapped it with the pen. “I <em>died. </em>I was attacked, and injured, and then <em>killed. </em>And I had no idea why.” He gave her a hopeless shrug. “And it happened again, and again, and again.” Dwight drew other servants—the one with a sickle who could vanish, the one with a saw who could fly, the one with the loud weapon who ran incredibly fast with it and as far as Adiris had seen, was one of only two other servants to be infected with plague like she was. He drew them killing him, on the hook, on the hook, with a weapon. “I’ve never even known why,” he told her hopelessly, and she didn’t know what his words meant, so she glanced up into his face, and he looked back at her with such a lost and despairing expression, she thought maybe he was asking her why people had done this to him, and even though she knew, and on any other day could have answered that question easily and without even sympathy in her voice, she was lost for a moment in the pain on his face, and couldn’t find any words inside her head at all.</p><p>“I didn’t do anything,” continued the leader, “I mean, I wasn’t perfect back home, but I wasn’t a monster. And all there is here is death, over and over.” He pointed to himself, then the skull, then gave her a hopeless shrug, looking very sad. “And there’s you.”</p><p>The boy pointed to her, and she felt her heart skip a beat. <em>Me?</em></p><p>“You kill us too,” said Dwight, drawing her now, she thought—badly, but, the height when compared to his own and the headdress and incense burner he gave her were recognizable enough. He drew himself trying to shield his face with his arms, crying, and her hitting him with the incense burner.</p><p><em>Well, </em>thought Adiris, a little distressed in spite of how completely unreasonable that was to be feeling in response to her situation, and how outlandish it was for a thing like him to accuse <em>her </em>of brutality at all, <em>That’s not fair. Of course I have punished you—you—</em></p><p>“And then one day, you don’t,” he continued, drawing himself kneeling, praying, and her looking down and watching that—back in the little stone temple, she thought. Then he hurriedly sketched her and him and Quentin in here, by the alter, where they were now—she was close to positive—and her with her arms outstretched. “I don’t know why.” He pointed to the first picture of her looking at him while he prayed and gave her a confused look and a shrug. “But you don’t hurt us. You take us here instead, and then you tell us to worship the <em>Entity</em>?”</p><p>The leader added a picture of her pointing to him and the medic on their knees with hands folded, then much smaller and by her head drew them praying to Nergal, then put that tiny drawing in a little bubble so it looked like it was coming out of her mouth and mimicked speaking while pointing from her to the picture with the bubble around it a few more times than was necessary for her to get that he was drawing a depiction of what she had said.</p><p>“So, we say no,” continued Dwight, glancing at her and shaking his head, then pointing to them worshiping Nergal and shaking his head again, “Because we <em>hate </em>the Entity.” He drew Nergal, and then his own face and the medic’s both looking very angrily at the god. “It’s evil. It hurt us.” He drew a face above Nergal with a big mean grin full of teeth and cruel eyes and an arrow pointing from that to Nergal, than tapped the pictures of Nergal grabbing him back in the woods, the one of him being sacrificed and killed, and then finally he tapped the picture of them worshiping again and shook his head at her very firmly. “So we say no.”</p><p>“That’s not true,” she said, forgetting she couldn’t, and it came out just muffled sound. Distressed, she let her shoulders fall a little and tried to think. What was all this? Why would he tell it to her? Everything was so wrong, and why? It was not at all like the truth, but <em>why</em> lie? Why would he think she would believe this? What could he possibly have to gain? She couldn’t understand it. He couldn’t be stupid enough to think she didn’t know what he was, and everything he was claiming was beyond insane. It—it wasn’t even a <em>good </em>lie! Why? Why tell her? He had to think it would accomplish something, but there—</p><p>“Then you get mad that we say we won’t do it,” continued the leader, not noticing the bafflement on her face, and still sucked into his work drawing. He held up a picture of her looking angry at them, and them backed up by the wall, looking scared, “We think you’re gonna kill us with the mace thing.” He tapped his older drawing of her hitting him with the mace, then indicated him and the medic scared in the picture.</p><p>
  <em>I wasn’t… I.</em>
</p><p>“But you stop,” said the leader, focused on his drawing again. It became a hurried sketch of her lowering her arms and looking less mad, them surprised and relieved. When it was done, he glanced up at her and smiled, and she felt funny about that, and didn’t know even how it would make sense <em>to</em> feel. She wasn’t even <strong><em>to</em></strong> here in his convoluted story at all yet—she was still trying to figure out why he was choosing to lie. And it was beyond overwhelming trying to keep up and file and respond and consider all of this back to back to back.</p><p>“We’re really happy about that, but then you suddenly get sick.” The leader drew her doubled over, throwing up on the ground, and she immediately felt embarrassed and a little irritated, remembering how that had all gone so wrong. “So, we,” continued the leader, gesturing to himself and the medic, then drawing them watching her and looking worried and shocked, “We have <strong><em>no</em></strong> idea what’s happening. Are you <em>dying</em>?” He tapped the skull and put a ‘?’ beside it, then pointed to the picture of her. “Is the Entity punishing you for <em>not </em>killing us?” asked the leader, pointing from Nergal, to the skull, to her in the drawing, to her mad at them, then indicating the picture of her hitting him with the mace and shaking his head and pointing to the picture of her lowering her arms and looking less mad again. “Did that make <em>it </em>mad?” He tapped her calming down, then Nergal, and drew an angry face beside him and another ‘?’.</p><p>
  <em>Wait—what? Did—hang on. Is he asking if Nergal was trying to kill me? Or them? Or both?</em>
</p><p>“We don’t know. We’re just worried. You look like you’re dying.” With the words, he added another picture, of her on the floor, looking like she was in pain. Them standing above her, looking scared. “So, Quentin, he saves you—he heals you,” continued the leader, gesturing from the medic at his side, to her, and making a motion like wrapping a cut, and pointing to the bandage around his own leg, then doing it all again: Quentin, healing an injury, Adiris.</p><p>She glanced at the medic, and he gave her a nervous look and drew back a half an inch, like he was afraid she might somehow find a way to lash out again.</p><p>“And it works,” said Dwight, quickly drawing her sitting up a little and not looking so hurt, them behind her, smiling and…holding hands above their heads? He tapped the picture of her looking extremely sick and shook his head, then did the same to the skull. “You’re not so sick, you’re not dying. We think it’s great.” Dwight indicated them in the picture again and added a smiling face above them. “We <em>think </em>you’ll be happy too,” he continued, pointing to her in the picture and drawing a smile. “But you’re not.”</p><p>Quickly, he put a huge X over the smile, and drew an angry face instead. “You attack Quentin,” said Dwight, drawing her with her hand around the medic’s throat, “I try to stop you, but you won’t listen.” He added himself getting kicked away. “You’re going to kill him.” Dwight pointed to the Quentin in the picture, and then pointed to the skull. “You’re so angry. And we don’t even know why.” He pointed to the anger on her face in the drawing, and gave her a hopeless shrug. “But you’re going to kill him, so I hit you.” He pointed to Quentin and tapped the skull again, then quickly sketched himself hitting her with a rock. “And we don’t know why,” continued Dwight hopelessly, shrugging again and indicating drawings to go with his words as he went, “You had <em>stopped—</em>you weren’t mad. And he <em>healed </em>you.”</p><p>Adiris looked over at the medic, and the boy unconsciously raised his hand to the deep purple marks on his throat as he looked back. Like he had interpreted her looking his way at all as a threat.</p><p>“And now we’re all just super fucked,” continued the leader. He scribbled another Adiris on the page, tied to the gate like she was now, and then himself and the medic kneeling close by, looking similarly miserable. “You’re unhappy—we’re unhappy,” he added, putting sad faces above all three and circling them, “And I am realizing now as I do this that I didn’t think through what I was going to try to say to you enough <em>at all, </em>but I am just <em>really </em>hoping there’s some way we can communicate here and not all end up dead, because right now it’s just bad all around.”</p><p>The boy stopped then, and glanced over her, then the medic. “What do you think,” he asked, voice a kind of hopeful that did not sound like it thought its odds were good at all. “Was that even <em>remotely </em>helpful?”</p><p>“Uhhh,” said the medic, glancing from him to Adiris and back, “I. I <em>think </em>so. She listened, at least. So that’s something. It can’t possible make things <em>worse </em>for us.”</p><p>“—That’s very true,” agreed the leader.</p><p>They both looked at Adiris then, who had no idea what the <em>fuck </em>they expected from her out of that.</p><p>What the fuck had that even been? They hadn’t asked her for anything—not even to open the door, which had been the note she’d been assuming this would end on. Just told a whole bunch of completely unbelievable and not even well chosen lies, indicated that they weren’t happy about the situation, and expected some kind of response out of that. She literally could not even <em>guess </em>what kind of response they were hoping to get.</p><p><em>Why would you tell me all of this? </em>she wondered again, looking back at them uncomfortably, because she couldn’t really move, and there was nothing else <em>to do </em>except avert her gaze, and she wasn’t going to keep showing weakness. <em>Why would you think this would help you?</em></p><p>The boys were clearly still waiting for a response. The leader tried holding the little book out towards her a bit to prompt her, and said, “Anything?” while trying not to sound hopeless.</p><p>
  <em>…</em>
</p><p>Slowly, Adiris glanced over the pages it was open to again, still thoroughly lost, and then she looked up at the leader and shook her head at him.</p><p>He immediately looked taken aback, as if whatever possible reactions from good to bad he’d expected from her, that one hadn’t even been on the list. “No?” he asked, confused, turning the book to see it himself, and then glancing back at her and shaking his head like she had.</p><p>Adiris shook her head again, cementing the reply.</p><p>Dwight looked at Quentin.</p><p>“No…why?” asked the medic, glancing at her, “No which part? Uh—” He shook his head and then gestured generally at the pages, looking incredibly confused.</p><p>She was halfway to internally trying to find a way to give some kind of real or understandable reply to that when the hope went out of her, and she stopped. What did it matter? Whatever it was they wanted, they weren’t going to get it. This was all really just prolonging the inevitable. And if she accused them of lying, they might go straight to force, and she would lose all the little time she had left to try and find some way out of this. So, instead of giving a real reply, she just slumped a little more against the cold stone ground and shook her head again, not really looking at them. Her head hurt. It had hurt since she woke up like this, but it was incessant, and getting harder and harder to ignore, and she was afraid she was going to vomit again, and. And trapped on her side like this, she was going to puke all over the floor when it happened, and it would all leak back along the ground onto her, and she would end up dying in a pool of her own vomit again, like she had in the caves, alone and disgraced and humiliated and suffering. She was trying <em>so hard </em>to force herself to fight against the nausea this time and not do it, but it was agonizing. She wanted to whimper, but she <em>wouldn’t </em>do that—not in front of infidels. Never.</p><p>“I-I don’t. Understand,” said the medic.</p><p>“…I think I pissed her off <em>more,</em>” said the leader after a second, sounding chagrined.</p><p>“It’s really easy to do that,” said the medic incredibly sincerely and sympathetically.</p><p>“I guess. I have no idea what I did wrong, though.” The leader almost sounded like he was just talking to himself that time.</p><p>“Join the club,” agreed the medic.</p><p>It was quiet then, for a moment, and Adiris focused on trying not to vomit, and trying to ever so imperceptibly move her fingers on the chains, searching for any little bit of slack in the knots she might be able to work with, praying not to be caught.</p><p>“Uh. Okay. Plague?”</p><p>Recognizing the word in their tongue they used for her, and forcing herself to be careful and bide her time, Adiris glanced tiredly up at them again. As soon as she made eye contact, the leader gave her a tentative and very weary looking smile and kept going.</p><p>
  <em>Why do you smile at me? You cannot hope to trick me, but you are not good enough at lording power to be really doing that right either, and if it is not one of those two reasons, why?</em>
</p><p>“Please,” said the leader, “I know you can’t be very happy with us right now, but please, just give us a chance. Try to talk to us. Uh—” Hurriedly, he flipped to a new page in his little book and drew for a second, then turned the page to show her. It was a drawing of her on the ground, and him holding the rock over his head, like he was about to crush her with it, and she felt her heart lurch in her chest. Almost the second he’d shown it to her, though, the leader crossed out the drawing with emphasis and shook his head at her. “We <em>do not want </em>to hurt you. Okay?” He tapped the picture and shook his head again, then met her gaze and held it.</p><p>For a moment, Adiris stared at him. She didn’t like how she was feeling, because she wanted to cry. She was <em>so </em>relieved, and that was stupid, because he couldn’t possibly mean what he was promising, and she should never believe it, but her body had on its own without her permission, and she was feeling its relief at a promise not to be killed at the same time she was feeling the despair of knowing that couldn’t possibly be true, and it was too overwhelming to experience both at once.</p><p>“Uhm…Here,” said Dwight after a second. Very gently and slowly, he held the book and pen out to her, and Adiris hesitated, and then took them awkwardly.</p><p>It was hard to hold them at all, the way she was bound by her wrists to the gate’s base, but she could just <em>barely</em> do it, and once she had found a position that worked, she glanced back at him with confusion and worry, not sure what exactly he wanted her to do with it.</p><p>“Can you draw?” he asked, pantomiming drawing on his palm, and then indicating her, “Whatever you want to say?”</p><p>Hesitantly, Adiris considered that, and then set the pen against the paper. She tried writing<em>, ‘Sasuniātu’ </em>to ask if they could read just on the off chance they knew any more written Akkadian than spoken, but glancing up at them, she could see nothing but blank confusion in their faces.</p><p><em>Okay, </em>thought Adiris, closing her eye for a second and trying to breathe.</p><p>What was she supposed to do? She could pretend to believe them. That might get them to untie her, to open the gate, and if she were free it would be easy to take them both in a fight. <em>But they can’t be that stupid.</em></p><p><em>Why are you lying to me? </em>she thought again, a little irritated with herself for being so stuck on this, like it mattered at all—like she had a reason to care why the infidels did anything. But it <em>did </em>matter to her—it made her angry, and frustrated, and she wasn’t even sure what else. This one had <em>always </em>caused her problems. He didn’t act like he should have—he didn’t act like what he was supposed to be. He acted like something different, like he was doing right now—like he was lying to her and saying he <em>was</em>—and it…</p><p>For a moment, Adiris looked past the blank page at nothing, and then slowly and with some difficulty, she started to draw. <em>Okay, then. </em></p><p>Carefully, Adiris traced out human forms. It was difficult to draw with so little mobility in her wrists, and a little painful, but she kept her pictures simple. Robes, headdresses like hers, and people kneeling at an alter. She glanced over at the infidels, who were both leaning in more than before and watching her draw with a great deal of fascination.</p><p>“Is that you?” asked the medic, pointing from one of the priestesses she’d drawn, to her.</p><p>Adiris shook her head. She kept going, then—adding. She made more figures. Men with weapons and torches, in a crowd. Then the men killing the priestesses. Setting fire to one, cutting another into pieces, grinning. She turned the book a little and looked up at them again, gaze firm and accusing.</p><p>The boys traded looks.</p><p>“Okay. So. Some priestesses <em>like </em>you—not you—got attacked?” said the medic slowly, checking whatever question he was asking with the leader.</p><p>“Who are they?” asked the leader, turning back to her, “Is this your family? Uh.” He pointed to her, and then the women in the picture, then flipped back a few pages and pointed to himself and tapped the picture of the mother and father with him he’d drawn, and gave her a questioning look.</p><p><em>You don’t get it, </em>thought Adiris with disbelief. She took the book back as roughly as she could with strength from her wrist alone, and he let go and let her, then gave a sound of choked alarm when she crossed out the whole page of drawings of his family and work.</p><p>He reached out like he was going to stop her, and she shot him an accusatory look, and he hesitated, then withdrew his hand again, looking confused, and Adiris angrily turned the pages back to the spread she’d been drawing on. Beside the pictures of men killing priestesses, she drew two more, very carefully giving them weapons, and one glasses and hair that puffed up in the front, the other a little necklace and a tree emblem on his chest, and then pointed accusingly from them, to the picture.</p><p>Both boys stared at the picture, and then each other.</p><p>“What?” said the medic, sounding horrified and confused. “No.” He pointed at the him she had drawn and shook his head.</p><p><em>You’re actually going to <strong>blatantly </strong>deny it, </em>thought Adiris, anger building in her stomach.</p><p>“We never did that,” said the leader, shaking his head too and pointing at what she’d drawn. “None of us did! I haven’t ever even seen someone like you before. I-I’ve never even held a sword! Not even at a Ren faire or something,” he added, taking the pen back and scratching over the sword she’d given him, still shaking his head.</p><p>“Yeah—I never even like <em>punched </em>someone for real until Krueger,” said the medic in the same tone of voice.</p><p>Adiris shook her head right back, and then pointed to what she had drawn and nodded, eyes narrowed.</p><p>“No!” said the leader, still arguing against the picture, “We didn’t! None of us did something like that. Jesus—is that—is that supposed to be me <em>burning </em>some girl to death? I never hurt anybody. Why would she think that?”</p><p>“…Where did you hear that?” said the medic, looking back at her, “Uh—you—” He took the book and quickly drew a face in profile, mouth open, speaking, and then a little bubble around the whole picture she had drawn, as if the face were saying the picture itself, and gave her a questioning look while tapping the speaking face. “Who told you that?”</p><p><em>Is…? </em>She had no idea what he meant at first, and then remembered that the leader had drawn what she had told them to do almost exactly the same way, with a little bubble with pictures inside it for speech, and it clicked. <em>Who.</em></p><p>She held out a palm, still giving the two infidels mistrustful and accusatory looks, and the medic gave her the book and pen back. She only used the book, though, turning it to one of the pictures Dwight had drawn of Nergal, and she tapped it.</p><p>The color went out of the faces of both young men as they watched her do that, and they got quiet and still suddenly. Adiris felt immensely pleased, having caught them in a lie and shown them she wouldn’t fall for the idiotic things they were trying to make her believe, thinking they had realized only then how well she knew the truth, but then the boys exchanged looks and their faces went from shocked to grave and hopeless and upset at all at once, and she felt…uneasy, suddenly. There was something very wrong in that look.</p><p>“The Entity said that?” asked the medic in a completely different tone of voice, indicating both pictures and double-checking. She gave a nod, still trying to look completely calm and assured, and for some reason, the boy looked <em>injured </em>by that answer.</p><p>“…Fuck,” whispered the leader, sitting back on the cold stone floor a little defeatedly.</p><p>The medic gave him a worried look.</p><p>“It makes sense, you know?” said the leader hopelessly, glancing sadly over at his friend, “Fuck, it makes <em>so much sense. </em>And we’re just fucked, then.”</p><p>“That makes sense to you?” asked the medic, face still ashen.</p><p>The leader gave a sad kind of smile that wasn’t so much a smile really at all as it was a sign of resignation and misery and defeat, and gave his friend a nod. “Think about it. We were <em>so </em>confused she was being nice to us at all, because everything here is a monster. Right? They <em>act </em>monstrous, they do unspeakable, inhumane things all the time—things no one could <em>possibly </em>choose to do and keep their humanity. So when she didn’t kill us, it didn’t make sense, because why on earth would anything like her not just torture us to death for kicks, or kill us to get it over with?”</p><p>“…Right,” said the medic slowly, glancing from him to Adiris, “But. If she thinks we did that, then…”</p><p>“Then it makes sense,” said the leader hopelessly, looking past both of them at nothing, somewhere else in his head. “She thinks we’re whatever people killed her friends, since the Entity told her so. So she’s been getting vengeance for a long time. But she felt <em>bad</em> for us. Because she <em>hasn’t </em>been killing us for fun at all—she thought we were the monsters. And she <em>still </em>felt bad for us.” He looked over at Adiris and gave her a look that was so sad and full of regret and sorrow that it shocked her, and she had absolutely no idea how to respond to it.</p><p>What could…? What would cause someone to look like that? Had…they couldn’t have <em>forgotten </em>they’d killed the other priestesses, could they? The idea made her almost want to panic. The thought of killing them for things they had died so many times they had forgotten they’d done, and how confused that would have felt, and awful, even if they <em>did </em>technically deserve it—because in the moment, they’d have had no idea that they did—it was <em>awful</em>. And—<em>No—no, there’s no reason that would happen. There’s no reason they would forget. It has to be something else, right? There’s no way. There’s—that’s not how Er</em><em>ṣ</em><em>etu works, it—I-I am not an <span class="u">expert</span>, but, but nothing written makes it sound like we lose our memories of our lives there. And Nergal has never said a thing about that—surely he would tell me? No. It must be something else. That’s impossible.</em></p><p>“Even thinking we were murderers, and murderers of her friends. She saw us in the chapel, praying, and she…” the leader stopped and looked down at the stone floor, looking sick.</p><p>“…She thought we were asking for forgiveness, didn’t she,” said the medic, looking even worse maybe than he did, and glancing at Adiris with a look like he was so truly sorry that it was beyond confusing to see. They had been working so hard to lie and claim they had never seen a priestess before, just moments ago, and now it was like they were totally different people—just sorry for what they’d done. “…You saw us pray,” said the medic, turning to face her a little, and clasping his hands together and shutting his eyes for a second to communicate the words she didn’t know, then indicated the picture she had drawn of him and the leader. “And you thought it was about that. You thought we were sorry. So you took us back here to ask God for forgiveness, and then you were mad and confused,”</p><p>“-because we wouldn’t,” finished the leader with him, mouth a set, unhappy, tired line.</p><p>“…But, that means she’s good, right?” asked the medic almost hopefully again, turning to the leader, “If—if she’s telling the truth, and you’re right, that would all make sense, then that means she’s not a serial killer like we know some of the others are. The Entity’s just using her.”</p><p>The leader nodded.</p><p>“That’s good, right?” asked the medic worriedly.</p><p>“No,” said the leader, somewhere between miserable and too exhausted to be much of anything at all. He saw the medic start to ask a question, and cut him off gently. “Quentin, she’s never gonna believe us,” he offered hopelessly, in the voice of someone breaking bad news to a loved one, “If the Entity told her we did that? She is <em>never </em>going to take the word of two people she thinks killed a bunch of her friends, over the word of—fuck—her <em>God, </em>I guess.”</p><p>Whatever Dwight had said, it had been very bad, because she saw the impact it had on Quentin. Like he’d struck a physical blow.</p><p>“There’s just no way,” continued Dwight hopelessly, glancing back at Adiris sadly, “If she had <em>no idea </em>who we were, and she was just some—some kind of medium-bad person, feeling a little regret? <em>Maybe </em>we’d have a shot. Maybe we could convince her we don’t deserve to die, and she might choose to do the right thing. But. If she is <em>dead sure </em>we’re the villains, and we don’t even have a fucking common language to try to use to help us communicate? We’re dead in the water. No matter what we say, how the fuck would we convince her to trust us over the thing she worships?”</p><p>For a moment, the medic was silent, thinking through all of whatever his friend had said quickly, and he glanced at Adiris again, this time in a way she couldn’t guess the meaning of at all.</p><p>“We can’t kill her now,” said Quentin, looking back at Dwight, “If that’s what’s going on—unless it was self-defense—”</p><p>“—I know,” agreed Dwight gently, giving him a kind of sad, kind of fond smile.</p><p>Whatever exchange they’d had seemed to make the both of them look at once both sadder, and a little comforted, which was an odd mix.</p><p>“…Well,” offered the medic after a second, clearing his throat and trying to smile at the leader again, “We ain’t gettin’ any deader, I guess. We might as well keep trying.”</p><p>The leader let out a breath that was almost a laugh, and then smiled, and gave a nod. “Yeah. I guess you’re right.”</p><p>In accordance, both boys sat up again and turned back to face Adiris.</p><p>Even distracted by watching and listening and trying to guess at what they were saying, Adiris had been working very carefully at the chains while they’d been distracted. She hadn’t made much progress, but she had gotten just the tiniest bit of slack in the first knot, and even though it wasn’t much, it had made her feel infinitely more relieved to have made any progress at all. She stopped when they looked at her though, and forced herself to not even look at the chains, so that they wouldn’t either.</p><p>“Well, this sucks,” said Dwight in a tried and friendly way, offering her a weak smile, “I know you aren’t gonna believe us, but we <em>really </em>didn’t do this.” He pointed to the picture again and shook his head. The medic echoed the gesture.</p><p><em>Are you kidding? </em>thought Adiris, genuinely taken aback. <em>You act sorrowful and full of remorse for almost two minutes straight, and then go right back to denying it?</em></p><p>“This thing? The Entity?” said Quentin, tapping one of Dwight’s pictures of Nergal, “It lied.” He shook his head and put an X over the picture she’d drawn.</p><p>Adiris narrowed her eyes at him.</p><p>“Yeah,” said Dwight, tapping the picture Quentin had X’d out and shaking his head too, “This? Never happened.” He flipped back a few pages and tapped the drawing he’d done of himself walking through the woods and getting grabbed, and nodded. “<em>That </em>is.”</p><p><em>How stupid…? </em>Adiris held out her hand. Dwight gave her the pen, and she turned back to the spread she’d used, and drew on the blank second page, casting them both dubious looks intermittently. She hastily added a burning temple with armed men around it, and added Nergal’s claw form as a symbol on the temple and the alter from her picture before as she went.</p><p>“Jesus,” whispered Dwight to Quentin as they watched, “Do you think that actually means someone out there really <em>worshipped </em>this fucker once? Or is it lying about that too?”</p><p>“I guess somebody worships it <em>now,</em>” said Quentin, looking deeply unhappy about whatever he’d said.</p><p>Adiris kept going. She drew the group of men with torches and swords going into a cave, with a huge shimmering gate. Then added Nergal, and drew one of the men driving a sword into him, and copied the sort of thing they’d done to indicate talking—putting that drawing in a bubble, and then making it look like one of the men by the gate was speaking it. She’d <em>really </em>wanted a way to communicate planning or intention, but that was close enough, she thought. As an afterthought, she added the man pointing towards the gates as well. This was beginning to seriously hurt her hand, and her left palm had started to bleed a little from the book spine cutting into her the way she had to hold it, but she forged on. Drew the men offering up bound people in headdresses like hers in front of the gate, on a pyre, killing them. Then the gates opening, and an arrow indicating the men going inside.</p><p>“This is all really horrifying, and every <em>single </em>detail she adds makes me know just how much more thoroughly screwed we are,” said Dwight to Quentin, “But she is <em>way </em>better at this than we are. Like, I think I understood almost everything she drew about as soon as she drew it.”</p><p>“That’s true,” agreed Quentin distractedly, focus still on the drawing Adiris was working on, “—I thought you did a good job though.”</p><p>Dwight snorted.</p><p>Adiris added a final set of pictures to the list. The men stepping past the gates, and Nergal snatching them with his claws, including Quentin and Dwight, then a picture of them being dropped in a ritual by it, and her coming to chase them, looking angry, a skull like Dwight had used to indicate death, which she X’d out, and then one of them sitting up at the campfire. Finished, she turned the page to face them.</p><p>“I understand most of this, I think,” said Dwight, glancing up and holding eye contact, “Uh—we come kill people, it looks like we’re killing the Entity’s priests. This I think is us wanting to kill the Entity too—which for the record is the only part of this version of events I condone—uh. Here it looks like we’re doing some kind of human sacrifice to open a big gate? Or maybe we’re just killing people until it gives up and lets us <em>in. </em>And then it grabs us, because it’s way tougher than us, and attacking it was stupid, and you get to come kill us for having done <em>that </em>to your friends, and we die but not really die, because we come back and go to the campfire. But all this?” He waved his hand broadly over the entire spread of images. “<em>None </em>of this is true. None of it.” He shook his head, then took her pen, and scratched out his face where she’d drawn it on soldiers, and then did the same to Quentin. “We <em>did not do this. </em>I? Was here.” Dwight flipped the pages back to his sketches, and pointed at them and gave a nod, then flipped back to hers and tapped the spread and shook his head. “<em>Not here.</em>”</p><p>“Yeah,” agreed Quentin, nodding.</p><p>Unbelievable. Even faced with how completely she knew the past, they were <em>still </em>denying all of it. They weren’t even trying to do it smartly, like telling her they’d been pressed into service, or just flag bearers or healers—one of them <em>was </em>a healer. Trying to get her to believe that was <em>all </em>he’d ever done? She could have believed that. Maybe, anyway. It would have been a much smarter story to go with. But they <em>just weren’t. </em>She was going to reach for the book back, or give them a scathing look, or something, but she was hit with an unexpectedly awful thud in her head where she’d been struck, and a wave of almost unbearable nausea with it, and she had to just keep her eyes shut for a second and focus on nothing but dealing with the pain and not letting it make her puke.</p><p>“Show her yours,” suggested the leader, glancing over at Quentin.</p><p>“Me?” asked Quentin in surprise. He glanced at Adiris, then the book, and then took it from Dwight. “Okay. I’ll try. I? Wasn’t here either.” He tapped the page she’d drawn and shook his head, then turned to a new spread and started to draw, shifting to move to be easier for her to see.</p><p>“I uh—this might be a little complicated,” he told her apologetically. After a moment, he turned the page to face her, displaying a drawing with a man, and a small child beside him, and behind them, the shape of a house—very similar to how Dwight had drawn his family. “This is me,” said Quentin, pointing to the kid. He’d given it the necklace, to help make things clear. “And that’s my dad. When I was really little, there was this man. Uhm.” He hesitated halfway through what he was working on, and his expression drained into a blank look.</p><p>Adiris had never seen someone look that way before. Except herself. A long time ago, when she had been little, those first few weeks walking around the temple, dead inside, just motion going, no person left at all. Surviving physically by trying not to think about things. She had looked like that—not sad, not hurt, just blank. Empty. Seeing it on someone else, she forgot for a moment to try with the chains, and looked at the picture, trying hard to guess what it was halfway to being. She couldn’t tell, but only a few moments later, Quentin cleared his throat and blinked and kept going as if nothing had happened, trying to shake off whatever that moment had been.</p><p>“A lot of us kids, where I lived. We got attacked. By a man.” He glanced at Dwight for a second, and Dwight gave him reassuring nod, expression grave, and Quentin turned the picture for her to see more easily. He’d drawn himself as a small kid, and twelve other children, and with them, a man wearing a striped shirt and a hat and with one hand that was a claw, or a gauntlet of some kind—maybe sharp extended talon rings even, like she wore. But definitely some kind of blade.</p><p>“Uh.” Quentin took the book back and drew for a long couple of seconds, then turned it back to face her. “Like this.”</p><p>He had drawn the man pinning one of the kids to a wall and slicing her arm open with the blades, slashing one across the back, and then a last picture where he had the one Quentin had said was himself very young pinned in a corner. He was just looming in that one, grinning and with his hands open and claws out, but the shaking child looked terrified, and she knew it was going to get him, and somehow that drawing made her feel more revulsion than the other two combined. She looked up at Quentin with alarm, after seeing it, and he had a hard look on his face, like he was telling her a story he didn’t want to tell. That was a look she knew too.</p><p>“My dad? And uh, other parents,” he added, tapping his father, and then adding hasty suggestions of adults behind the first drawing of the other kids and tapped them with the pen, “They found out.” He added his father beside the picture of him backed into a corner, looking alarmed and horrified, as if he had walked in on the scene. For several long seconds, he went back to drawing in silence, and then he showed her the book again. “So, they killed him.” He’d drawn his father throwing a torch, and the same torch hitting the man with the claw, then the man bursting into flames, and a skull. <em>Dead.</em></p><p>“We thought it was over,” continued Quentin, “I didn’t even remember it once I got older, not for a long time. But. When I got older.” He drew himself as he looked now, older, with the tree shirt. And then drew the man with the claw again? Yes, it had to be him. The same striped shirt, the same hat, the same claw on one hand. But different this time, lines all over his face. <em>Scars?</em> Quentin carefully tapped the picture of the man and looked over at her. “He came back.”</p><p>Adiris looked up and met his gaze, trying to understand what that had meant. He had just said that the man was burned to death by his father, hadn’t he? <em>Maybe it is a group. They dress the same because they are from the same order—a uniform. And another one came. </em>That seemed likely—it would explain the face being different, wouldn’t it? What kind of cult had sent men to hunt down children, then?</p><p>“…Shit, I don’t know how to explain this on paper,” said Quentin nervously, glancing over at Dwight, “I don’t know how to be like, ‘He came back, but as a demon that only killed people in dreams.’ I don’t even know how to visibly represent ‘came back to life’—a sheet ghost? How do I know if wherever she’s from, they even draw <em>ghosts </em>the same way.”</p><p>“…Yeah, uh….Fuck. I don’t know either. Maybe do a graveyard? You could do corpse him, and then him as a ghost above it? That—that has to be <em>kind </em>of universal, right?” suggested the leader.</p><p>“I’ll try,” said Quentin without much confidence. He re-focused on the book for a second, and then glanced at Adiris. “I’m gonna keep talking to you. Sorry if this is just more confusing, because I know you have no idea what I’m saying, but it takes so long to draw, I feel weird just leaving two-minute gaps in a conversation. I’m gonna do my best to explain this, but I don’t know how good that’ll be. The man from before? He came back to life, after being dead.” He hurriedly tapped the man attacking the children, then the skull, then his drawing of the similar man with the different face. “Uh. Not as a human. He came back as a monster—as some kind of demon. Like this? Well, not actually like this—he didn’t have <em>much</em> corpse left to bury—he was mostly ashes already, but I don’t know a better way to try to draw this?”</p><p>He offered her a drawing of the man with the striped shirt, face scarred now, but she was pretty sure this time from the way he’d drawn an arrow pointing from the picture of him burning, to the picture of the corpse, that it <em>was </em>meant to be the same man after all. In the drawing, he’d had his eyes X’d out, and was laying still beneath the ground, a rock marking his grave. From the corpse, there was a wavy line, like smoke, rising up to the air above the grave, and there, floating above the ground and surrounded by dark swirling smoke, he’d drawn the man again, face still scarred, and grinning evilly.</p><p>“…Gallu?” asked Adiris, forgetting again that she couldn’t quite make that sound with her mouth full of cloth.</p><p>“G—what did she say?” asked Quentin, surprised.</p><p>“I don’t know. Ga-wu?” offered Dwight, looking back at her.</p><p>“D-did you say ‘Gallu’?” asked Quentin.</p><p>Adiris stared at him. <em>He <span class="u">does</span> know Akkadian! He knows a word at least! </em>She stared to nod, excited, and the exact same emotion lit up in his face at the recognition.</p><p>“Holy shit!” he said excitedly, turning to Dwight, then back to her, “Yes! A—a Gallu! Or—I think so! Pretty similar!”</p><p>“Oh,” said Dwight suddenly, eyes getting huge like something had just clicked, “Oh, wait!-Wait—I know that too!” He turned to Quentin. “It’s like a ghost! But it’s Babylonian, right?”</p><p><em>‘Babylon!’ </em>That was two! That was two now!</p><p>“Yeah, yeah, I think so,” said Quentin excitedly, and then, with suddenly furrowed brows, “Wait, how did you know that.”</p><p>“Uh. There was a show—a thing—I don’t. –It had a lot of uh, mythology from all over and all times, and I don’t remember half of it, but uh.” Dwight embarrassedly cleared his throat.</p><p>Quentin got a funny look on his face. “Gallus a minor enemy people fought maybe?”</p><p>Dwight suddenly looked like he was using every ounce of willpower he had to fight the urge to laugh. “We’ll talk later—if we live that long.”</p><p>“We don’t have to,” offered Quentin, giving him a grin.</p><p>“Well…” said Dwight, grinning back.</p><p>“I’m so sorry. I just lost about two years off my life,” said Quentin, turning back to Adiris, “But that’s okay. Did we get that right? Are you, uh—Babylonian?” He pointed at her and said again, much slower, “Babylonian?”</p><p>Adiris nodded, eyes big.</p><p>“Well fuck,” said Dwight, still smiling, but shaking his head and looking utterly overwhelmed. Quentin glanced at him in confused surprise. “If she’s from fucking <em>Babylon, </em>she’s gotta be speaking Babylonian. Not even fucking <em>Adam </em>might know that. We are <em>never </em>gonna get someone here in the realm who could translate. We are <em>so </em>fucked on the language front.”</p><p>“Oh yeah,” said Quentin in the voice of someone who had somehow managed to completely understand points both A B, but to skip right past the knowledge that one naturally and inevitably followed the other. “Shit,” he said, turning back to Adiris, “You’re really from. …Fucking, something or other <em>B.C.? </em>You’re not even from an <em>A.D. </em>at all?”</p><p>There had this time been 0 words she recognized, so she just stared kind of blankly back, no idea how to answer, even though she was pretty sure it had been a question.</p><p>“How is she that old?” Quentin asked Dwight, “How is she still alive? I-I mean, after Jane, we knew it could travel a little through time, but. Fuck man, I never thought—”</p><p>“—Please, Quentin, I love you, but stop,” begged Dwight, shutting his eyes and putting his hands over his face as he slumped down on his back against the floor. “There’s already about seven more major issues going on right now that I’m equipped to deal with. I <em>can’t </em>do time travel. I can’t.”</p><p>“…You’re sure?” Quentin asked Adiris almost nervously, “Uh. Babylon. Mesopotamia, Enkidu, Gilgamesh? I don’t know any other words at all, fuck.”</p><p><em>Gilgamesh! </em>Adiris lit up again and nodded enthusiastically, for some reason she hadn’t even placed, overwhelmingly relieved. <em>They know the epics!</em></p><p>“Oh boy,” said Quentin. He gave her a weak smile.</p><p>Dwight started laughing on the ground, eyes still shut.</p><p>“What?” asked Quentin.</p><p>“Dude. This has been the weirdest day ever. Even for us,” said Dwight, opening his eyes and smiling up at him, “But fuck it. Keep going, I guess. Bad news comes in threes, right? Plague showed up to nab us, Plague worships the Entity and thinks we’re evil, Plague is apparently from fucking <em>ancient <span class="u">Babylon</span>. </em>That’s three. I’m not dumb enough to say something about it not being possible for it to get worse, but come on, how many times can we keep spinning the metaphorical gun barrel of life and hitting the one chamber with the bullet. Besides,” he added, sitting back up a little and taking a steady breath, “She seems less flipped out now. I think you made her happy, recognizing what she said.”</p><p>“Yeah?” asked Quentin hopefully, looking from one to the other, “I hope so, because she was pretty pissed when I started drawing.”</p><p>“Like you said, what have we got to lose,” said Dwight supportively, joining him again, “Keep going.”</p><p>“Okay,” said Quentin a little more hopefully, turning back to Adiris, “Uh. So—Krueger. He came back as a kind of Gallu. Every time we were asleep…” He paused and quickly drew himself sleeping, then a big bubbly circle with a small trail of bubbles leading to the version of himself that was sleeping—almost the way he and Dwight tried to show people talking—very similar, but not quite the same. In the bubble, he drew himself again, awake and standing up, looking shocked. And hovering over the bed, prying open the little bubble, he drew the Gallu, grinning and floating and looking hungry. “I uh,” he said, glancing over at her, “I don’t know how well you’ll be able to get this, but I guess it doesn’t matter too much anyway.”</p><p>“—I thought you did a good job,” said Dwight encouragingly, “I wouldn’t have known how to draw a demon getting into people’s dreams at all, but I’d get that, I think.”</p><p>Quentin gave him a grateful look and kept going. <em>…Dreaming, </em>decided Adiris, pretty sure, trying to listen and piece together what he was drawing. It would make sense for something like a Gallu to attack through dreams. They were known for doing that.</p><p>“He uh, anyway, he came after us again. We were all older,” continued Quentin, quickly drawing a couple of people about the same height and age as he was drawing himself—two girls, two boys, and him, side by side. He tapped a few of the earlier child drawings and the older versions to link them, and she could see a little resemblance, even as quick and non-detailed as his drawing was. One girl had long brown hair as a child, again as an adult, one of the boys was wearing a shirt with the same plaid pattern both times, another the exact same smiling expression, and the fourth girl the same light ponytail. For a moment, Quentin just looked at the drawing he’d made, and his shoulders slumped a little, then he slowly reached over and added a few more sketches to the background—other older kids, she realized when the number ended up the same as the group before—thirteen. The others didn’t have much detail, but it was definitely them, and Quentin paused again once they were there, then took a breath. “…And he killed them.” He didn’t look at her this time, just at the page. Then he picked up the pen and added another drawing. The Gallu, running its claw through a person from behind, coring out their whole chest. There was no detail on the person he was killing, so she wasn’t sure which one it was meant to be, but then Quentin tapped the drawing he’d just made, then one of the older kids in the back of the group of twelve, and then the skull. He X’d out the older kid he’d indicated, and then pointed to another, and to the Gallu running someone through again, and the skull, and then he crossed them out. And then did the same to another. And another. And Adiris realized the figure the Gallu was killing wasn’t meant to be any of them specifically in the picture where it cored someone—it had been drawn so Quentin had the action of killing to refer to multiple times, because it had happened more than once. And he kept going. Kept indicating another older kid, and the Gallu killing them, and the skull for death, and crossing them out from the group picture, then immediately pointing to another. And another, and another, and another, and he didn’t stop, and Adiris realized he wasn’t going to, and watched in horror as he slowly crossed them <em>all</em> out, even the ones he had given detail to, until there were only two; him, and the girl with long dark hair. He looked sick by the time he had finished.</p><p>No matter what he had done later in life, that was a horrible thing to lose friends to, and Adiris watched him carefully, trying to read deeper into the expression on his face and really understand it. She wondered why no one had helped him, when it had come back for them. Why no one had exorcized it, or warded them. How it could possibly have been fast enough to get them before they knew it was coming, or powerful enough for them to have such trouble stopping it. It must have been a very strong one indeed. She had never really taken much note before, because she had always tried not to, but the medic had scars she could see on his face—long, thin gashes, little matching lines of four. Claws, she was realizing now. It had to be.</p><p>“Uh,” said Quentin quietly, more to shake himself and refocus than anything, “Anyway. He came after me.” He drew for a little stretch of time, and then showed her a new drawing. Himself, in one of the bubbly little borders she thought meant he was trying to show it was a dream. He was backed up against a wall, fists balled for a fight, facing the Gallu, which was grinning and had its claws out. “We were fighting, and he was going to kill me,” continued Quentin, indicating the picture, “But all of a sudden, this fog came in.” Hurriedly, he added dark billowy mist to the scene, and then from the mist, thorny talons she recognized instantly.</p><p>
  <em>What? No.</em>
</p><p>The boy kept going, and he drew a new little picture below the first, drew Nergal snatching him and the Gallu, the way Dwight had drawn himself being grabbed.</p><p>“This thing—the Entity—it came out of nowhere, and got us both,” said Quentin, glancing at her. “I showed up at the…campfire,” he held the last word and hurriedly scribbled a little fire with vaguely humanish shapes sitting around it, pointed to himself, and then the people around the fire. He took a moment then, drawing more carefully, then showed her again. It was a drawing of one of the beacons they lit in rituals, in one of the ritual grounds with a street. He had drawn himself fallen backwards onto an arm, staring up in shock, and the Gallu standing over him again, grinning, claw drawn back to kill him. “And he showed up too,” said Quentin, tapping the Gallu, “…And he killed me.” He indicated himself, and the older picture of the Gallu running someone through, then the skull. “And I came back, and other things killed me,” he continued, drawing himself and then several other things with raised weapons—the servant of Nergal’s with the scythe, the one with the head of a pig, the floating one in white, herself. Each time indicating the skull to show they had killed him. “And you know the rest,” he told her kind of sadly, flipping back to the things Dwight had drawn, and indicating the picture of him and Dwight in the little temple, and her arriving, and then gesturing vaguely at all that came after.</p><p><em>I don’t understand, </em>thought Adiris, head thudding from both the pain in it from the injury she could still feel leaking blood slowly past her shoulder blades and down to the ground beneath her side, and now with a feeling that was becoming more and more dangerously like anxiety too, <em>Why. Why is this happening. Why would he say this. </em>Why did he have that scar?</p><p>
  <em>No.</em>
</p><p>“We didn’t want to worship the Entity, because we <em>hate </em>the Entity,” said Quentin slowly after a few seconds and no real response from her at all, indicating the drawing Dwight had done of her talking to them here, by the alter, and then refusing to do what she’d asked, then flipping back to the spread he’d been drawing on last, and adding another picture—the Gallu, smiling and looking wickedly proud, gripping him by the shoulder with one hand and running the claw through his chest—himself with his eyes shut, dead maybe, she thought. And behind it, he put Nergal, claws resting lazily on the Gallu’s shoulders, and then he put a mean smile above that and circled it, then tapped the picture of Nergal again. “It did this to us,” said Quentin, looking at his drawing, then her, “And I know you’re not gonna want to listen to this, but it lied to you.”</p><p>Adiris looked worriedly at what he’d drawn, and then back at him, and shook her head.</p><p>He deflated a little, but more than frustrated or disappointed, he just looked sad.</p><p><em>It isn’t how you think. </em>She started to say something, forgetting <em>again </em>she couldn’t, and then stopped, trying hard to run things through in her mind. <em>‘Isn’t how you think’? What are you saying to yourself? It’s not like he says, not like he thinks—that’s all lies. He came here with the rest to try to kill a God. He <span class="u">knows</span> he’s wrong.</em></p><p>But.</p><p>She looked back at him again, distressed, her mind and her gut pulling her in completely different directions, and afraid to listen to either. Listening to her gut had gotten her here—had gotten her to show mercy to infidels and murderers, gotten her bound to a gate and bleeding and in very real danger of facing death very soon. But her mind wasn’t satisfied either. Her mind said, <em>‘Yes. They’re lying. But <span class="u">why</span>. Why like this? Why so unbelievably? And why in so much depth? He looked pained—why tell a half-truth that is painful, when it’s not even convincing? What do they think this will do?’, </em>and she didn’t have an answer for it. She couldn’t figure that out either. It didn’t make sense. They weren’t <em>stupid, </em>she thought—surely no one was <em>this </em>stupid, and even if someone was, these two had been intelligent enough to find a good way to communicate, so they must be…</p><p>
  <em>Why were they so surprised and excited to hear you say ‘Gallu’. Why were they so excited when they said, ‘Babylon,’ and you nodded? Why did they treat that like a discovery? They know where you’re from. They know where they were last. They know where they were going. That <span class="u">wasn’t</span> news. Why did he ask you three times to make sure—why did he only know four words at all, and two were characters from an epic.</em>
</p><p>The voice in her head wasn’t asking those questions in a tone like it had asked all the rest. It felt darker, and looming, and she was afraid of it. Like the thoughts were pulling together a door with the questions they posed, and it was almost solid enough to open, but she knew somehow that whatever was on the other side of that door was very bad, and if she opened it, it would not close again, and there would be no stopping whatever was on the other side.</p><p><em>….It. Nergal <span class="u">can’t</span> have made a mistake, </em>she thought hopelessly, having a harder and harder time thinking at all as her intense and desperate bid at concentration aggravated the already relentless pounding in her head, <em>He is too smart, too in control. He could not have gotten some bystanders caught up by accident. That isn’t possible. And neither has claimed even being close to Er</em><em>ṣ</em><em>etu, or to any army at all.</em></p><p>Fuck. She had seen the Gallu. She hadn’t remembered it before, because she had only ever seen it from a distance, and what had stuck with her the most was the colors of it, and there had been no color on the ink drawing at all, but she knew that must be it. She glanced at the page again, and yes—the stripes on the shirt. The hat. She had never seen it close enough to know it had a claw like that, but the appearance was too similar—it <em>couldn’t </em>be a coincidence. That <em>was </em>one of the things that performed rituals. She had never spoken to it—never spoken to <em>any </em>of the others, actually, but she knew it was.</p><p><em>He’s lying, </em>she thought, staring straight ahead, <em>There’s no other answer.</em></p><p>Adiris made herself look back at the boys, who were both watching her with caution and interest. She shook her head again.</p><p>“It’s okay,” said the leader quietly to the medic, putting a hand on his shoulder, “You did a good job. We knew it was a long shot. I think she believed yours more than mine, if it makes you feel any better.”</p><p>“Do you think she believed it enough to matter?” asked the medic.</p><p>“I don’t know,” said the leader, “Guess we’ll find out.”</p><p>“What do we try next? I mean, we could tell her everybody’s story, if we have enough time, but I don’t know if she’s gonna care. I’ve got some scars I could show her,” added Quentin, “But I could have gotten those anywhere. I don’t know how to prove <em>anything </em>to her.”</p><p>The leader considered that, and nodded slowly, then glanced over at Adiris again.</p><p>Something strange happened, and for a second, Adiris’ vision went off, and then it was back, and she was left wondering if that had really happened at all—it had—it had been like losing consciousness, but only for a half a second or something. That hadn’t happened to her before. And it scared her a little. She could still feel blood slipping slowly down the back of her skull from where she’d been hit, and the puddle around her was getting big enough she could feel it beneath her side now. It was so cold—had it been cold before? Gods, she wanted to vomit. But she wouldn’t die in a pool of her own vomit again. …<em>No, </em>realized Adiris, feeling even worse, wanting to cry and desperately unwilling to do it, <em>No, I won’t. I can’t, because I <span class="u">can’t</span> vomit. If I vomit, I won’t be able to spit it out past the gag—I’ll choke on it and suffocate while it burns through my throat. If I vomit, I’ll choke on it and die.</em></p><p>With the sickening realization, the urge to puke intensified mercilessly, and she shut her eyes, struggling to breathe steadier and keep herself from doing it. <em>Please. Nergal, please, please hear me. I need you. I have messed up so badly, and I am afraid. Please, forgive me. Don’t leave me to die like this.</em></p><p>“You keep saying no,” said the leader, and Adiris could tell he was talking to her, so with great effort, she made herself look up at him again. He pointed to the page Quentin had drawn last, and then her, and shook his head, then gave her a questioning look.</p><p>She nodded.</p><p>“Okay, then what happened to <em>you?</em>” said Dwight, pointing at her. He opened the book back to the drawings he’d done of himself. “This was me, and how the Entity got <em>me,</em>” he said, pointing to himself, and then specifically indicating the drawing of Nergal grabbing him. Flipping to Quentin’s pages, he did the same—indicating them and his friend, and specifically the drawing of Nergal taking him and the Gallu. “And this is what happened to Quentin. What happened to you?” he finished, pointing at her again. “What’s <em>your </em>version, your—” He flipped between his and Quentin’s drawings, indicating elements. “Parents—home—work. Entity. How did <em>you </em>get here?”</p><p>…<em>Me? </em>She felt lightheaded. <em>Why would you…want to know…?</em></p><p>Hesitant and shaky, Adiris reached for the book and pen and took them, then stared blankly at the objects. There had been…so many things she was…thinking. Just before this. About…about how to get free, and why they were saying what they’d said, and now. It. It all felt far away and hard to remember in detail suddenly. That…couldn’t be a good sign.</p><p><em>Okay, come on, </em>thought Adiris, trying weakly to rally herself, <em>They want to see your version. That’ll…it’ll at least buy you some more time. Time for Nergal to notice. Try.</em></p><p>Hand and drawings much shakier than before, Adiris started to do it. Carefully, she inked in a little girl, and then two parents, and six other children, all a bit bigger—her the smallest, at the end of the line, and a little suggestion of a house behind them, the way the boys had drawn their own families. With tremendous effort spent on staying steady and not listening to the urge to vomit, Adiris tapped the version of herself she had made, and pointed to herself, then looked weakly up at the foreigners.</p><p>“Wow, you had a lot of siblings,” remarked Dwight, eyes on her family.</p><p>Taking the words she didn’t understand as some sign they’d got it, Adiris kept going. Drew her father taking her hand and standing in front of the temple, then him leaving and a priestess taking her inside. She crossed out the picture of her family and home then, and circled the temple instead. Drew herself standing alone in front of it as a child, holding a little broom now. Then checked wearily to see if they were following. They both looked confused.</p><p>“…Wait, so,” said Quentin slowly, glancing over what she had so far.</p><p>“Is this a…school?” asked Dwight, tapping the temple, “Uh…How would you draw-?”</p><p>“—Why did you cross out your family?” asked Quentin, pointing to her first picture.</p><p>Adiris sighed. She pointed to the picture of her in front of the temple, and then gestured vaguely at the place they were in now.</p><p>“Oh! Oh it’s a temple,” said Quentin at the same time Dwight said, “<em>Not </em>a school. Okay.”</p><p>“…Wait, so, your dad…<em>gave </em>you to a temple?” asked Dwight, pointing to the picture of her father leaving the steps and looking greatly confused.</p><p>Adiris had been starting a new drawing, but she paused, trying to guess what his question had been from his expression.</p><p>“Why?” he asked, shrugging at her, “Is that normal? Uh—did you—is this what you <em>wanted</em>?” He took the pen from her and added a smile above her in the picture by the temple, and then put a ? after it, and gave her a questioning look.</p><p>Almost irritated, Adiris took the pen back and scratched out the face and put a frown over it instead. And then, since that wasn’t quite right, a sad face instead beside it.</p><p>“O-okay no—sorry,” said Dwight, watching.</p><p>“Why?” asked Quentin, tapping the drawing of her dad, and looking at her again.</p><p>They had said that word a lot, and from the look of complete confusion on his face, she was pretty sure he was asking her the reason for the action. <em>Huh, </em>she thought almost sadly, trying to echo the word in her head, <em>‘Why’. I know a single word in their tongue now, I think, and that is the first one.</em></p><p>She wasn’t sure she wanted to answer the question, though. That was personal. <em>Is it? </em>Her heart sunk a little. It was so long ago, and insignificant, and over. What did it matter, to her, or her family, or anyone else…</p><p>Carefully, Adiris moved the pen back over to the crossed-out drawing of her family, and she added a loaf of bread. She sliced it into sections—eight sections—lines made by the pen, and then put a slice above each of the crossed out family members. She was out before reaching herself, last in line, and just put an X instead. Then she drew a person with their hand on their stomach, looking sad. Tapped the picture of the loaf and shook her head.</p><p>The boys exchanged glances.</p><p>“…Because you didn’t have enough food?” asked Quentin quietly, looking and sounding horrified in a quiet way. He pantomimed taking a bite out of something, then shook his head questioningly. Adiris nodded.</p><p>“Fuck,” whispered Dwight.</p><p>Adiris went carefully back to drawing her new picture. She drew herself again, older, holding a bowl for a priest as he performed a ceremony—pointing from herself in the picture to her now, to make sure they could tell. Added a few people praying around them. Then another picture. The vague suggestion of a city, and beside it, a quick drawing of a woman with boils and a man throwing up. She pointed at them, then circled the whole city, and—still a little afraid they wouldn’t get it, she made herself cough, and repeated the motion with purpose.</p><p>“Okay. So. She goes to a temple. Works there,” said Dwight carefully, glancing at Quentin, “Then people start getting sick?”</p><p>“In the city, yeah, I think,” agreed Quentin. He turned to Adiris and coughed dramatically, then gestured broadly to the whole city she’d sketched. Adiris nodded. <em>Good. This one they got easily.</em></p><p>“I wonder if it’s with whatever she’s got,” said Dwight.</p><p>“Oh. Yeah…” said Quentin. He glanced at Adiris. “Uh. Sick?” He echoed the coughing, and pointed at her people and the city, then at her, “Like you? Uh.” He imitated vomiting, which unfortunately Adiris, activated the gag impulse she had been fighting so hard to control with <em>so </em>much of a vengeance she started to choke before she managed to swallow the bile back down, and for a second she couldn’t do anything but shut her eyes and focus on breathing, fighting to get control back.</p><p>
  <em>Fuck, fuck, fuck. Don’t throw up. Don’t throw up.</em>
</p><p>“Shit—is she okay?” she faintly heard the medic say worriedly.</p><p>The impulse subsided a little, and Adiris took a breath and then let it out slowly, and opened her eyes again. She glanced up at Quentin, who was watching her with worry, and gave a nod.</p><p>“You okay?” asked Dwight after a second, watching her try to refocus on the little book.</p><p>Adiris wasn’t sure what that meant, though, so she just kept going. <em>Finish. Once you have the whole thing, they will take the book to look at it, and you’ll have a…have another few—</em>Fuck. Fuck, her head.</p><p>She shut her eyes again for a second, and the pain subsided to bearable levels again after a moment.</p><p>
  <em>Okay. Come on. </em>
</p><p>Moving even slower than before, Adiris continued her drawings. She added one of a priest throwing up, and then him lying in a sick bed and handing her a tablet. One of her taking the tablet and wearing her headdress now, and speaking in front of a crowd. Several people with boils kneeling and praying in front of a statue, and her praying over them. She circled some of the infected sites she’d put on people’s arms and legs to make sure they understood what the people were praying about, and then drew a little picture of herself, looking down at a foot she had extended, and a boil on it. Drew herself kneeling in front of a statue, praying, and then shook her head, and drew herself looking at the leg again, like before, but added more boils and lesions, spreading the infection up her leg. Drew herself praying again, and then shook her head again, and drew herself a third time. Infection up her side, her arm, her face. She sighed, and paused a moment, glancing over at them to make sure they didn’t look lost. They didn’t this time, just grave.</p><p>Adiris kept drawing. She drew herself standing in front of a little crowd of people with similar boils and lesions and tissue loss, motioning in a <em>Come here </em>manner, and echoed the gesture herself to make sure they understood it. Drew a tiny drawing of a mountain, and a person praying, and put that in a bubble by her mouth in the drawing the same way the boys had been indicating the subject of speech, and pointed to that, then drew a new picture beside it of herself leading the congregation up the side of a mountain for real, holding her incense burner. She added a cave to the mountain, and human figures around it, and an arrow pointing inside. Then started to draw them inside the cave.</p><p>“So…” she heard Quentin say, talking to Dwight as she worked, “…So far we got terrible family.”</p><p>“Given to a temple,” said Dwight in a voice like he was naming items on a list, “Or left at one or something. Sold maybe. I don’t know.”</p><p>“Something bad,” agreed Quentin, “And then she got older. Worked at the temple. Helped out. Then people started getting sick. And it looks like she started being a priest to help. But then she-”</p><p>“-got sick too,” said Dwight with him in agreement, “And she prayed. Got sicker. Kept praying. Got even worse.”</p><p>“…Abandoned,” said Quentin quietly, like it was its own thought. He cleared his throat. “And uh. It looks like that one there is a pilgrimage. To go pray on the mountain.”</p><p>“I think so,” agreed Dwight soberly.</p><p>“Why is she so much better at this than we are?” asked Quentin. Whatever the question he’d asked had meant, she was vaguely aware of Dwight shaking his head in response. Adiris was mostly still focused on her picture.</p><p>This was the hardest drawing she’d done, because even making people just basic shapes, it was a lot of detail. Trying to communicate pain on faces, and vomiting, and some laying dead in pools of bile. Herself there in the middle, dying too, kneeling. She did her best, though, and once she had the scene, she glanced up at them to make sure they were looking. They were. Adiris added a figure praying to the page beside the drawing, and tapped it, and then the version of her in the cave, and then shook her head sadly, and drew a skull by the picture as well. She tapped one of the people she’d drawn laying on the ground, and the skull again, and repeated the gesture, one by one by one, finally marking herself with death. That seemed good to her for saying what she’d tried to say, but she thought for a second about how to do the rest. After a moment, she tapped herself and the figure praying one last time, and then began to add to the drawing. Added smoke, and thorn-like talons. Nergal. Drew one closing around her. Directly below that drawing, she started a new one then—her and her followers standing again, somewhere new. Standing here, outside <em>this </em>temple now—Nergal waiting above them in the air.</p><p>“Oh my fucking God,” she heard Dwight whisper while she drew, “Quentin, that’s who the people are.”</p><p>“…Oh fuck.” The words came like an exhale.</p><p>His tone had been odd, and so had Dwight’s, so she glanced up at them. They were both pale. A strange reaction to have to this part of the story, she thought. Not sure what else to do, tried to make sure they’d understood, and tapped several figures and the skull and shook her head, then put a smiling face above the little crowd.</p><p>“We’re so fucked,” said Dwight quietly, “We knew it was bad, but it’s worse than bad. She doesn’t just think that we killed friends of hers; she thinks the Entity <em>saved </em>her, her <em>and </em>her entire congregation. It <em>did, </em>I guess—No <em>wonder </em>she worships it. God, she is <em>never </em>going to believe us.”</p><p>“Why would it do that?” asked Quentin, harried, “It’s—we’ve <em>never </em>seen it do something altruistic before. Why would it rescue her and a whole buttload of people from certain death and just let them chill out here, while it tortures everyone else?”</p><p>“I have no idea,” said Dwight hopelessly.</p><p>She’d kept drawing while they talked, and she presented the finished images to them. Her kneeling before Nergal, praying. After tapping that one, she flipped back to her old ones of them and the soldiers attacking a temple and pointed to it, then back to her new drawings—her, standing by one of the beacons, angry and determined, swinging the incense burner at one of them, then putting one on a hook. Nergal claiming his sacrifice, and her looking proud. She set the pen down, relieved, her hand aching from use at a bad angle.</p><p>“…Wait,” said Quentin after a second, brow furrowing. He glanced at her. “Why didn’t it heal you? Uh.” He took the pen and book, and by the last drawing she had done of herself, he added a new one, just like the way she’d drawn herself, except without the boils and lesions and damage. He pointed to her drawing of Nergal, then the two versions of her, and gave her a questioning look.</p><p><em>Oh. </em>Adiris took the pen and drew Nergal again, and beneath him, symbols. Swords clashing for War, a skull for Death, and then a person vomiting for Sickness. She had thought to add another for Chaos, but wasn’t sure how to represent that, and she’d only <em>really </em>needed to convey “God of Plagues” in the first place, so she decided that would probably be good enough, and just stopped there and connected the symbols to the god with lines, and circled them.</p><p>The boys studied the drawing and then exchanged looks.</p><p>“…Wait, so. …<em>That thing</em> caused this?” checked Dwight, gesturing from Nergal, and the symbol of the person puking, to the whole city she had drawn, and then various people she’d shown with illness, and circling back to Nergal.</p><p>Adiris nodded.</p><p>The two young men traded looks again, this time disbelieving and horrified.</p><p>“…What the fuck,” said Dwight, looking back at her.</p><p>“You’re saying that this thing <em>made </em>you get sick?” asked Quentin, pointing to Nergal, and then the drawing of her ill beside the one he’d drawn of her without the sickness, “Almost killed you.” He tapped the cave and the people dying and the skull, looking betrayed and almost angry. Disbelieving. He pointed from the drawing of her praying, to the skull, a look on his face like he had uncovered a gruesome murder. “And then made you come worship it to not die?”</p><p>Adiris blinked with her remaining eye, trying to understand all that.</p><p>“<em>It did this to you</em>?” said Quentin with great emphasis, repeating many of the motions from before, and then gesturing just at her herself broadly, “Makes you stay like that? Made you sick, and then made you work for it so it wouldn’t kill you too, and forces you to stay miserable and dying and in pain all the time—a-and makes you be <em>thankful </em>for that?”</p><p>“—Quentin,” said Dwight gently, putting a hand on his shoulder. Quentin stopped and looked at him, still visibly upset. “Careful,” continued Dwight sympathetically in the same tone, “We’ve made her mad several times not liking her god.”</p><p>“But.” Quentin swallowed and looked back at her, distressed, and then at Dwight. “She. I-I mean, look at her. Can you imagine living like that? All her skin is gone, and she’s covered in growths, and cuts, and can’t stop vomiting. It has to be <em>agony.</em> She <em>can’t </em>like living like that.”</p><p>“I don’t think she does,” agreed Dwight, glancing at her as well, “But I don’t think she thinks of it like that.”</p><p>“Then someone should point—” started Quentin.</p><p>“—Quentin, she knows it keeps her sick,” said Dwight steadily, like he was trying to gently break some bad news, “Think about it. It makes sense. Think about how mad she got at you for healing her.”</p><p>“For…W. But,” said Quentin, glancing from one to the other, and she saw something click in his face, and his expression fell, “No. You <em>want </em>to be sick?” he asked Adiris, taking the book and circling the picture of her ill, then putting a smile beside it, and giving her a look like the thing he was asking couldn’t possibly be true. “Not healthy?” He crossed out the one he’d done beside that, of her without the illness, and gave her the same look again.</p><p><em>…</em> It seemed like he was asking her for her preference, but it wasn’t that simple. Adiris lifted a finger and tapped the drawing of Nergal, and the symbol for the plague domain beneath him, and shrugged as best she could. When he just looked aghast at that response, she pointed to the drawing of him saving them from the cave.</p><p>“But it did this to you in the first place,” said Quentin pleadingly, indicating the city falling ill she’d drawn, and Nergal, and shaking his head at her.</p><p><em>Yes…He is the god of Plagues, but he is still the one who had mercy, </em>thought Adiris. She had had a follow-up through to that, but it vanished instantly as something else that had taken too long to connect finally did. <em>Wait. You didn’t know.</em></p><p>She looked up at them, eye wide, searching through very recent memories for micro-expressions, replaying things in her head. He had <em>asked. </em>He had asked her why Nergal didn’t heal her. Then they had asked to make sure they understood when she had listed domains. They knew that—they should have known that—they should have known <em>all </em>of that going in. <em>No, </em>thought Adiris, heart sinking, feeling overwhelmingly guilty and sickened again, looking up at the medic and the dark bruises around his throat, <em>You really didn’t know. You had no idea what you were doing was wrong at all, and I almost killed you. For. For a lack of information. You thought you were helping me. You were only trying to help, and I tried to end your life for it.</em></p><p>There had been no way for her to know. She couldn’t have known! They should have known! They should have known all of this—all of the things about Nergal, and the things they were asking her—how could they <em>possibly </em>not? They couldn’t have come to hunt down a God without knowing even which one he was—that was impossible. They…</p><p>She felt frantic suddenly, and very, very bad. Little exchange after exchange playing through her head of all the things they should have known. The things they had seemed surprised by. The lies they had been telling in their drawings. <em>Why.</em> It was all <em>so </em>overwhelming, and she already felt so awful it was hard to think at all, and this was making everything worse. They had been so horrified she was sick and he was the God of plagues. Trying to—to—<em>Fuck. </em>The anxiety that had started with their excitement over hearing the word ‘Gallu’ became too real and exploded across her chest, and it was one more thing than her body could physically handle, and she lost it—she lost the struggle she had been maintaining against her own body and to her overwhelming horror she felt herself vomit, and she couldn’t stop it.</p><p>Vomiting was always a painful and unpleasant feeling—out of control, and burning, and exhausting. But it had <em>never </em>been anything like the way it felt to vomit and not be able to spit it out. She sensed herself going to convulse and tried to scream or cry out or say something, and there was just nothing she could do—she felt the bile tearing up her throat, and it hit the gag and had nowhere to go, and she kept trying to vomit, to vomit more up, to vomit the rest of it out, to clear her throat, and couldn’t, and it backed up, and she choked on the acidic, foul mixture of stomach acid and rotting organs and filth. She felt it go up her nose and burn as she jerked on the ground, trying desperately to breathe or to stop vomiting, but it was impossible. She couldn’t stop. Her throat was on fire and she was choking, and it stung, and through all of it, her body kept trying to vomit, again and again and again, and each time, more of it went up her nose, or to her wind pipe, back into her throat, filled up her mouth, and all she could do was throw up and choke on it.</p><p>Through the agony in her body, she was only barely aware of the sound of the boys’ voices crying out in alarm around her, lost to the horror and agony of the unending attempts to vomit and the acid trapped in her throat, and her inability to breathe, and then something snatched the gag off of her, and she could do it for real again, and she fell against the ground and convulsed, vomiting over and over until there was nothing left.</p><p>Still feeling her throat and nose burning, and utterly exhausted when the heaving stopped, Adiris stayed against the stone floor, eye stinging from the acid and welling up, and then welling up enough to spill over and run down her cheek as she watched the puddle of awful foul-smelling green rot and pink flecks of blood and bits of her stomach lining slowly trickle back towards her. She couldn’t get away, like she had known.</p><p>There was movement above her, and a large piece of deep blue fabric was hastily thrown down over the vomit, stopping it short of reaching her, and she looked weakly up to see the medic, jacket gone now, hurrying to join the leader and kneel beside her.</p><p>“Is she okay?” asked the medic worriedly, looking to the leader for direction.</p><p>“I don’t know,” said the leader, looking awful. He reached out a hand like he was going to touch her, and then hesitated, cursed under his breath, and started to quickly dig through his pocket. Almost instantly, he came back with a little bit of white fabric, a bandage maybe, and he turned back to her and reached out carefully and slowly towards her face, watching for signs of resistance from her.</p><p>She was too exhausted and weak to have any response at all, though. It was all she could do to keep making herself breathe.</p><p>“I am <em>so </em>sorry,” said the leader, sounding sorry and still looking awful himself, “I didn’t think that would happen.” He lifted her head gently, she felt the cloth wiping away bile from where it had dripped down along the corners of her mouth past the gag when she’d been trying to force it out. “I should have. I knew you might vomit, but I didn’t even think about what would happen if you did that with a gag. I swear, I just didn’t want you to make noise.”</p><p>“Dwight.”</p><p>The medic’s voice. He sounded gravely worried, but it took Adiris a moment to find him through the blurry vision and aching in her head. He was almost out of her line of sight, above her, by her head. She could see him staring at his hand though, and he turned it to face Dwight, and it was covered with what could only be blood. She didn’t know whose that was. She didn’t have the energy to wonder.</p><p>“There’s so much blood,” whispered Quentin, “I-I couldn’t see it all from where we were sitting, the way she was pressed up against the gate, but it’s all over her back, a-and dress, and the floor. She’s <em>still </em>bleeding.”</p><p>“From where I hit her?” asked Dwight, horrified and unbelieving.</p><p>Quentin nodded and swallowed.</p><p>“Fuck,” whispered Dwight, “Fuck—can we stop it?”</p><p>“I can try,” said Quentin, “I’m almost out of bandages. Do you have anything left?”</p><p>“Socks,” said Dwight with great distress, “My shirt.”</p><p>“Fuck, me too,” came Quentin’s voice.</p><p>Everything felt so overbearingly heavy around her. Adiris was so used to feeling sick that it was normal to her, but this was different. Oppressive, and consuming, and so, so heavy. Like a blanket with weights sewn in being lowered over her, making it impossible to move, and dampening sound, blurring vision. But leaving her colder somehow. If the pounding in her head had been awful before, now it was unforgiving, aggravated from the stress of trying to throw up for so long. She wanted to cry so badly. It was the exhaustion. Her body was feeling <em>so much </em>exhaustion that it wanted to cry the feeling out. And she almost couldn’t remember anymore why she was so unwilling to do it.</p><p>“No-no, use mine,” she registered one of the voices it took her a second to realize was the leader’s, “We don’t have anything to cut with, but it buttons, so it’ll be longer than yours open, and the fabric’s easier to rip.” He was tugging off his shirt, and she was confused, and tried to be alarmed, but she didn’t have the strength for that anymore. The shirtless young man looked down at her worriedly, and she was struck by how completely he didn’t look like a soldier at all. Almost no muscle tone, no tan from marching in the sun, no chest shape built for long walking and firm lungs. He was built soft, and pale, like a scribe. Like he had told her he was. Like she was. Like she…would have been…if there had been enough of her left to be anything at all but gaunt, and dying. If she had lived long enough to look like that. It made her sad.</p><p>She felt gentle pressure against her head, saw the medic in her periphery, winding white material around her head, and trying to secure it in place, casting her worried looks as he went. Adiris blinked at him with her one eye, trying and failing to get it to focus.</p><p>“I think she’s gonna pass out,” said Dwight anxiously to Quentin, “She keeps shutting her eye, and she’s breathing slower—is she passing out, or dying?”</p><p>“I-I don’t know,” said Quentin, pausing what he was doing and lowering a hand to her neck. Adiris’ heart sped up and she was overcome with panic, and tried to pull back, letting out a pained little sound of alarm. “It’s okay, it’s okay,” said Quentin soothingly, “I’m just checking your pulse.” He didn’t stop, but he didn’t grab her throat like she’d thought he was going to either. Just placed a couple fingers at the side of her neck, glanced at Dwight, and quickly said, “Watch?”</p><p>Dwight tugged one of his bracelets off and passed it to Quentin, who kept his fingers at her throat and his eyes on the little object he’d been given with focus. Dwight watched for a second, then turned back to her. Still looking worried.</p><p>“It’s okay,” he promised reassuringly.</p><p>She wondered what he was trying to say. From his tone, he was definitely trying to calm her. It would have been nice to know the words. Maybe they would have helped.</p><p>“No, no, no, come on, don’t pass out.”</p><p>Adiris hadn’t realized she’d closed her eye at all until she felt a hand against her skin and opened it. The leader was looking down at her, face full of concern. She could feel his palm against her cheek, keeping her head lifted up a little bit gently, and off the floor.</p><p>“Please don’t die on us,” said the leader, trying to smile at her, “I really didn’t mean to hurt you this bad—I didn’t think I did. I’m sorry we didn’t stop the bleeding for you—we couldn’t see how much blood there was from over here. We didn’t know. But you’re still okay, right? You’re doing okay. I know it’s been rough, but you’re staying with us. I see you watching me, so I know you can still hear me,” he added, almost a little encouraged, “Yeah—there you go. That’s a little bit more awake. Just keep listening to my voice, okay?” He glanced away from her for a second then, towards his ally. “How’re we doing?”</p><p>“It’s way too fast,” came the medic’s voice quietly. Adiris tried to see his face, but she couldn’t get her vision to focus at all, and trying made the pain in her head worsen.</p><p>“Shit. Will she be okay if we can stop the bleeding?” asked the leader in a hushed tone.</p><p>“I-I don’t think it’s the blood,” replied the medic, giving her what she thought even through the blur to her vision was a worried look, “She’s in shock, but I think it’s septic.”</p><p>“What?” said the leader.</p><p>“Organ failure,” said the medic in a hushed voice, glancing at her again, “Listen to her breathing.”</p><p>The boys were both silent for a moment, watching her, and Adiris blinked slowly and then let her eye fall shut again. She was so tired. Even breathing was too hard. No matter how many breaths she took, it wasn’t enough, and it hurt her throat and chest from the vomit every time she tried.</p><p>“No, no, no—hey, please don’t do that,” came the leader’s voice again, and she felt something touch her.</p><p><em>I can’t, </em>thought Adiris despairingly, <em>I don’t know what you want from me. I don’t have the strength. Just leave me alone, please.</em></p><p>It all hurt so much, and she was so tired. She just wanted to sleep.</p><p>“Don’t pass out. You can do it. Please hang in there.”</p><p>There was a sensation she didn’t recognize at first, but it was comforting.</p><p>It had…been such a long time. Since anyone had touched her at all. Even. …Even before the…Plague. She had. …and no one…after…had…it…</p><p>…It was pleasant, and calming, and good, and it had been so long, so she opened her eye again, trying to wake back up a little so she would stay awake enough to keep feeling it. The boy had both hands on her face now, and was moving one of them gently. Stroking her head, she realized very, very slowly. Trying to remember if anyone had ever done that before. Her…mother, and father, maybe. …Maybe a…long, long time ago… And. She realized on a delay. He was stroking the left side of her face—the side he wasn’t propping up. The side covered with lesions and rot and skin that had sagged over and taken an eye with it, and chunks of skin around her mouth pulled back, and missing teeth. The side with no ear, and a growth against her skull, and only a few tiny remaining patches of hair at all to be stroked back the way he was doing it. But the only thing in his expression was worry, when he looked down. Not repulsion, or fear, or hesitation. Just worry.</p><p>It felt so good, to be touched like that. His hands were cool, and she was freezing, but it somehow still felt good to her, and she didn’t understand why, but she was grateful for it. She hoped he wouldn’t stop.</p><p>“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you like this,” the leader told her, distressed in a quiet way, like he was trying to be gentle about it. “Quentin, is there anything I can do to help?”</p><p>“I’m sorry,” came the reply from his friend. Adiris took a second to find his face again, and she could barely make him out, but he looked awful. She wondered what was wrong. If something had happened she couldn’t remember. “I’m sorry. I don’t know. I don’t know what to do. I’ve never seen this happen.”</p><p>The leader glanced at him in surprise and concern at his tone.</p><p>“Fuck.” The medic looked down at her and fidgeted nervously with his hands. “Fuck, I can. I.” He sounded so incredibly distressed, and he took the necklace he wore and closed his fist around it. “I-I’m trying to heal her,” he pleaded, looking to the leader, “That’s <em>all</em> I can do—but it’s not working. It won’t start—I can’t control it—I don’t know how, I’ve never known how.”</p><p>“It’s okay—it’s okay,” said Dwight, still holding Adiris, but attention on his friend now, “Listen to me. <em>None </em>of this is your fault. I’m the one who hurt her—I’m the one who gagged her. You didn’t do this.”</p><p>“—Yes I did!” said Quentin, “I went to the chapel!”</p><p>“-You didn’t,” said Dwight, firm, arguing almost, she thought. Almost aggressive this time. It was confusing. Almost enough to make her anxious. “Listen to me. We are <em>both </em><strong>trying </strong>our best. We’ve done okay so far. Even though it’s been bad. You can do it. It’s what you do. You heal people, just by being around. I <em>seem </em>calm right now? But that’s just because I know with <em>absolute </em>certainty that you can do this. Before you woke up, I was a fucking mess, because I had fucked up so bad and let you get hurt. But the second you woke up, you tried to shoulder all the burden, and that was stupid, but it made me sure we’re partners, like you always do, and we pulled a plan together, and we have already lived longer than I was certain we would when you were out and I was alone. She got mad when you healed her before, but you didn’t do anything wrong. Not just because you didn’t know. Because it <em>wasn’t </em>wrong. You didn’t fuck up. She’s confused, because the Entity’s using her, and it’s in her head. But you healed her, and that’s more than it’s ever done. You won’t be hurting her if you do it again, even if she gets mad. We can figure it out. You can do this. I know you can. I know you.”</p><p>Partway through that, Quentin had looked like he’d calmed down, and he gave the leader a nod when he finished, and took a breath. “Okay. Okay…” He gave the leader a shaky smile then shut his eyes and exhaled slowly, hand still closed around the necklace.</p><p>For a few seconds, nothing happened, and it was quiet in the room. Then Adiris felt a strange sensation that was almost familiar in the back of her head where it ached. An absence of pain. A feeling like stepping into a cool pool of water on a hot day. Taking pain with it. It settled on her skin, and she saw the leader smile above her, looking proud and happy, and he was still stroking her head like he had been before, and she felt for just a second really okay for the first time in so long. At peace, and safe, like everything was going to be alright. There was a tugging in her chest then, and she thought it was the urge to cough, but she didn’t. It was strange. Not unpleasant, but unfamiliar. Like her lungs were changing shape. She could breathe again then—breathe normally. And with it, she felt the stupor she’d been in lift, and she was suddenly thinking very close to critically again—thinking with understanding of the situation, and memories of who these people were, and what they’d done to her, and what had been going on. The thoughts she’d been having seconds ago and thought were so normal and rational all felt strange to her now and she could see how little they made sense, and it was terrifying she had been so sure at the time they were normal. But they hadn’t been—they weren’t. And one of the infidels that had attacked her and threatened to kill her was holding her and stroking her head, and the other was <em>healing </em>her. <em>Again. </em>Again, and this time after she had explained to them what Nergal was.</p><p>They <em>had </em>to understand how wrong this was, and that what they were doing was blasphemous, and they were forcing her to commit a blasphemy too, against her own god, and with no control or ability to stop them. And that felt <em>so </em>awful. Being possessed and used and defiled. But at the same moment, she was seeing and replaying with ability to think critically, the expressions on their faces, and the young man ripping off his shirt to try to bandage her head, and the enemy and captor pleading with her to not pass out. And Gods, those pieces of information went in completely opposite directions, and she was torn by them. Half of her replaying ways they had spoken to her, and times they had been confused by something they should have known, seeing scars in line with Quentin’s story, Dwight cutting off his own thumb months ago, in that one trial she had never been able to forget, the way he had looked at her while holding what she had thought was the dead body of his friend in his lap and spoken to her like he was heartbroken and begging her just to tell him why. The other half reminding her of warnings Nergal had given, of the indignity and cruelty and humiliation of being left like this, and taking her headdress, and forcing her to heal, reminding her how ridiculous and stupid the lies in their pictures had to be, and how stupid and pathetic and traitorous it was to consider Nergal could have even made a mistake, and how much he had done for her, saving her life in that cave when she had been utterly abandoned, again, by anything she had ever known or loved.</p><p>“Naparkûnūti,” whispered Adiris, tearing up. <em>Please. Please stop.</em></p><p>“She said something?” asked the medic, opening his eyes hopefully and sounding excited. He saw the look on her face then, and his expression immediately faltered.</p><p>It didn’t stop. She could still feel the sensation in her muscles, changing things. Unrelenting.</p><p>“Sh-shit, shit, I-I can’t turn it off,” said Quentin to Dwight above her, almost panicked, “She’s upset—look at her—did you see the way she looked at me?”</p><p>Dwight looked down at her face and took in the expression, then back at Quentin. “Can you get out of range?”</p><p>“I-I don’t know, I can try,” he said, hurrying to his feet and across the little room. She watched him back up until his back was against the far wall, “Is that enough?”</p><p>The leader looked down at her, then back to his friend. “I can’t tell!”</p><p>Her vision got strange, suddenly—distorted, but only partially, and she couldn’t understand what had caused it until she shut her eye, trying to clear it, and she could <em>still </em>see. She was seeing a ragged image, crossed by lines of slumped tissue, almost like trying to see with your hair fallen over your face, but an image just the same. Out of her <em>left </em>eye. Her dead eye. The eye she had thought was completely gone. <em>No.</em></p><p>Nergal would notice that. She could try, but how was she ever going to explain this—explain what had happened, and how this had been done to her? He would be <strong><em>furious</em></strong>. He would disappointed. He might not even want her anymore. After everything he had done for her, she had acted against orders, and even when they had assaulted her and degraded her and forced her to commit blasphemy, she had <em>still </em>listened to them—<em>still </em>considered, faltered. Been swayed by their lies. <em>Why? </em>Why. She felt broken, looking at the pile of her mistakes. At the foolishness and disloyalty towards a God she <em>so deeply loved. </em>She hadn’t meant to—hadn’t thought of it like that. She had only thought maybe they were changing. Nergal was everything to her—her savior—the reason she had for living. He had given her life again, and a purpose—an important one. An incredible one. And he had saved <em>all </em>her followers for her. And against all of that, all of that that was so invaluable and wonderous and real and vital to her, so had let pity make her falter. And look where she was. And they still. Wouldn’t. Stop.</p><p>She was overcome with a deep, seething, boiling, hating rage. It <em>consumed </em>her.</p><p><em>I can get free now. You made a mistake, </em>thought Adiris, her fury cold in her chest, looking up at the infidel who still held her, and she sucked in a breath to vomit on him.</p><p>He realized <em>immediately </em>what she was going to do and whirled at the sound to look at her in shock, then let go of her and flung himself bodily backwards, hitting the stone floor and trying to crawl back out of range fast enough. “Wait, wait, wait!” He hit the alter, crawling backwards on his elbows blind, and flung his arms up over his head to shield his face, “Don’t! Please!”</p><p>The medic tore off from the back wall and ran for his friend, and Adiris turned her head to aim for him instead, but before she got the chance, he slipped coming around the far side of the alter, and went down hard against the stone ground. It had been the edge of her pile of vomit, she realized, that he’d stepped in, and caused him to slip. And as he dragged himself up frantically fast, cursing in desperation and jerking away from the pool of green rot he’d landed by, she realized he <em>hadn’t </em>landed by it. He’d hit the edge of it, with his left arm. Just a little—halfway between the wrist and elbow—but she could see the smear of putrid bile there, and she saw him see it as he dragged himself away from the vomit on his knees. Saw the horror on his face as he recognized what had happened.</p><p>The infection spread so fast here.</p><p>It had been bad in Babylon, but in Erṣetu? It was merciless. He would be on the floor, convulsing and vomiting up entrails, by the end of an hour. She was already watching the skin around the vomit turn deep pink, and then purple, like a bruise, and start to very, very slowly branch out. Like watching poison spread.</p><p>The boy clutched the arm with his other hand, but kept it extended away from himself, and she saw in the heartbroken look on his face that he knew it was a death sentence. Just not a fast one.</p><p>“Quentin?”</p><p>The leader. He was worried, trying to see from where he was what had happened, and he moved like he would go to him, but the medic held up a hand.</p><p>“Stop! Just. Don’t touch me, okay?” said the medic, trying to sound brave.</p><p>“No,” said the leader almost inaudibly, like an exhale, and she saw the color leave his face.</p><p>“I-it’s okay,” said the medic. Whatever he was saying, Adiris was pretty sure lying. “It’s just my arm. If we make it out, maybe we can cut it off before the infection spreads. An amputation wouldn’t be so bad.”</p><p>The leader didn’t answer. He just looked desperate. And broken.</p><p>Adiris had forgotten, somehow, watching this, that she had been intending to vomit on them, and she still hadn’t done it. She had been expecting to need to, to stop one of them from picking up a stone and bashing in her head before she could get her arms free, but neither of them had moved to do that.</p><p>Almost like he’d sensed what she was thinking, the medic turned to look at her then, and edged to her left and forward just a little on his knees—trying to put himself between her and his friend without being close enough to touch him, and he put his hands up and out towards her, like he was surrendering. The spot on his arm was starting to turn black in the center. Gods, the disease moved <em>so </em>fast in this place. She remembered watching that happen to her foot over the course of several days, praying and praying and praying for the color to come back, when it never had.</p><p>“You’re mad,” said the medic, meeting her gaze and, she thought, trying to get her to hold his while he spoke, “I know. But you’re mad at me. Not him. Please. I was only trying to help.”</p><p>“Quentin, don’t,” said the leader.</p><p>“I’m already infected,” said the medic, eyes still on Adiris.</p><p>“It’s just your arm—we could fix it,” argued the leader.</p><p>The medic ignored whatever he had said. He kept his eyes on Adiris, and then slowly he lowered his hands. Watched her for a second. And then shut his eyes and bowed his head a little. Like he was waiting for an executioner to take his head.</p><p><em>Surrendering, </em>she realized, feeling a strange emotion tied to the sight, <em>Really surrendering.</em></p><p>Behind him, the leader moved forward and caught him by the back of his shirt and jerked him back, which startled him, but before the medic had even really had time to register what had just happened, the leader already had an arm around his waist to pull him close, and was giving Adiris a look that very clearly communicated the sentiment, <em>‘If you touch him, I will see you dead, even if that means killing myself to do it.’</em></p><p>“Stop! Stop—don’t touch me,” said the medic, trying to disentangle himself while keeping his left arm as far from his friend as possible.</p><p>“No. And I swear to God, if you don’t stay here with me, I’m going to touch the infection site on your arm on purpose,” said the leader firmly.</p><p>The medic gave him a horrified look.</p><p>Dwight barely bothered to respond to it, though. He looked back at Adiris instead, gaze firm and unyielding. <em>Angry, </em>she realized. No. It was a deeper feeling than anger, and a quieter one. Almost the way he had looked at her before, when she had thought the medic was dead.</p><p>Like he was disappointed. Or betrayed. Like he was challenging her to justify it.</p><p>The feeling like cool water in the air was still going. Of all the things. Weaker, and fainter, but she could feel it a little. And it was giving relief to the nausea and agony in her stomach that never let up.</p><p><em>You’re still doing it, </em>she thought, looking over the little medic crouched beside his friend, trying to think his way out of a situation he wasn’t going to be able to out-think. He looked back at her when he sensed her gaze, and he was very afraid of her. <em>Why on earth did you heal me. </em>The fury from before wasn’t gone, but she wasn’t feeling it either—it was like she had paused the feeling, and it was waiting in her chest for permission to resume, but she couldn’t give it permission right now. Not while taking in the look on his face. <em>You knew it would go badly. </em>But he still was doing it, even now, with a fatal infection slowly creeping up his forearm. <em>Little mage who can’t control his own magic. </em>Her heart fell a little, and she felt cold suddenly. Thinking about the way he had been angry, asking about Nergal making the city sick, and her. Leaving her unhealed. Not understanding how these things worked. <em>I don’t think I understand either, </em>thought Adiris hopelessly, <em>I believed in Enki with everything I had, and I knew he would save me. It must be so easy, for a God to heal a mortal. To heal all of them, even. But with all that ability, this little foreign mage I have tried to kill that can’t even really control his own magic has healed me more than anything with true power ever has. And it wasn’t easy. It would have been so easy for Enki to save us. For anything like him to save us. It would have been nothing at all. And still, we died. All of us were abandoned. But you knew if you saved me, I would probably kill you, and you did it anyway.</em></p><p>But she didn’t know that. She was thinking and feeling and believing two things at once, but they couldn’t both be true. There were only two possibilities, really, and it was an either-or, with no way to combine the two. Either they were lying, and everything was as Nergal had told her it was. Or Nergal was lying, and their story was the truth. And she didn’t want to believe them. She wanted with every fiber of her being for them to be the liars, and Nergal’s version to be the whole truth. She <em>needed </em>them to be lying. But she didn’t know. She didn’t know if she thought anymore that they <em>were</em> lying or not.</p><p>
  <em>…But I could find out.</em>
</p><p>“Alkam.” Adiris looked up at Dwight when she said it, and when he made eye contact, she motioned for him to come closer with her head.</p><p>Dwight gave Quentin a nervous look and didn’t move. Seeing him hesitate, Adiris pointed to the little book where it had fallen and been forgotten about a foot from her, then looked up at him again.</p><p>Getting that, Dwight let out a long, shaky breath, and then said, “Okay,” and let go of Quentin.</p><p>“Dwight-” started Quentin, half-committing to a motion to stop him.</p><p>“It’s okay,” said Dwight, pausing to hold up a hand and stop him, “I’ll go slow. She doesn’t look so mad anymore. Besides, you’ve seen her projectile vomit. If she decides she wants to infect me now that the gag’s off, there’s nowhere in this room far enough away from her to keep that from happening for long. We don’t have anything to lose. It’ll be okay. Just—wait there a second.”</p><p>He turned and came slowly towards her, not standing up but not crawling either, just kind of awkwardly edging over while crouched, and Quentin let him go with great distress, watching with fear and concern from a few feet back.</p><p>Hand up and out and still going very carefully, Dwight retrieved the book and pen, then came over and held them out—very clearly half-expecting to be slammed in the face with a mouthful of vomit at any second, and dreading it.</p><p>Adiris didn’t do that, though. She took the book and found a blank page, and quickly drew, keeping the book tilted so he would have to wait to see it until she was finished. The leader anxiously hung close, and when she was done, she turned the book and held it out to him, and he leaned in a little and squinted, then gave her a truly lost look. Not like he hadn’t understood, but like he hadn’t expected it so much he didn’t know how to respond.</p><p>“What did she say?” asked Quentin.</p><p>“…Uh.” Dwight looked over and met her eyes for a second.</p><p><em>Trying to decide if you trust me, </em>thought Adiris, not sure how to help him make that decision, and just looking evenly back instead.</p><p>“She…wants me to untie her,” answered Dwight, glancing back at Quentin, “She says if I do, she’ll open the gate. And fix your arm.”</p><p>“What?” said Quentin, more taken aback than anything else.</p><p>“She drew a-” Dwight paused and glanced at the page again. “Uh. It looks like a bottle of some kind. She’s got me giving her the key, and her opening the gate, then her with us somewhere—I think one of those rooms with the little cubbyholes in the walls? She drew her getting a bottle from one of them, and pouring that on your arm, and your arm looking normal again.”</p><p>“Do you think she can actually do that?” asked Quentin, “If she can, why hasn’t she healed herself?”</p><p>“I don’t know,” said Dwight, watching Adiris, not his friend, and studying her expression.</p><p>“Why would she help us? She got mad again a second ago—she was about to kill you,” said Quentin.</p><p>“Yeah…” agreed Dwight slowly, “Although. She does seem to keep changing her mind a lot...”</p><p>“…What do you think?” asked Quentin.</p><p>Dwight considered for a moment, then finally glanced back at him. “Well. I guess our options are try to kill her—in which case, even if we succeed, we are both going to be very infected by the end of it, and still locked in this room. Pray the Entity finds us before we die and decides us as food is worth saving us, or something. And we’ve murdered a girl—in self-defense—but who genuinely thinks <em>we’re </em>murderers, and if we live, we have to live with <em>that </em>for the rest of our lives. Or I untie her, and we pray she’s telling the truth. Best case scenario, you don’t die of plague, and maybe she even lets us go eventually. Worst case scenario, she’s fucking with me, and kills us really slowly and horribly in here for hitting her with a rock and tying her to the wall.”</p><p>“…Those are. …Pretty vastly different options,” said Quentin after a second.</p><p>“Yeah,” agreed Dwight, almost smiling at him.</p><p>“…Do you think she told us the truth? About herself, I mean. In the book?” asked Quentin.</p><p>Dwight glanced back at her again and held her gaze, searching. She held still and let him, not sure what he was looking for or what he would find.</p><p>“…Yes,” said Dwight finally, breaking eye contact and looking back at Quentin. “She’s seemed pretty genuine a couple times. I think she was happy when you figured out what language she was speaking. And before, when she first woke up, I think she felt bad after a minute, about how much she’d hurt you. Even if she <em>could </em>hypothetically be just a really good liar, and have taken us here today because she wanted to mess with us, she’s never been one of the cruel ones before. So. I don’t think I buy that as a motive. I think she told us the truth.”</p><p>They were both silent a second, holding each other’s gaze.</p><p>“Do it,” said Quentin, and Dwight gave him a nod. She wasn’t sure what she thought they’d said to each other, though she was sure they were discussing what she’d drawn, but seeing the looks on their faces, she felt fairly sure that even though they’d been discussing together, they’d both reached whatever decision they’d made separately. Then compared notes, and just found it had already been the same conclusion.</p><p>Dwight turned back to her and took the book and drew a skull. He pointed to what she had drawn and nodded, then pointed to the skull and then himself and shook his head and gave her a questioning look.</p><p>Adiris gave a nod.</p><p>He repeated the skull-himself-head-shake just in case, and she shook her head in agreement, and tapped the drawing of her opening the gate instead.</p><p>“Okay,” said Dwight, reaching over carefully and taking a shaky breath. He met her gaze. “I’m trusting you not to murder me. <em>Please </em>don’t make me regret this.”</p><p>She could guess the sort of thing he was saying from his tone, and gave another nod. He nodded back, and started to undo the chains for her—having a little difficulty himself because of how well he’d tied them.</p><p><em>…Oh no. You’re really going to do it, </em>thought Adiris, watching him with big eyes and willing him to stop, <em>Don’t do it. Don’t finish. Don’t make my world the one where your version was the truth. Attack me. Attack me again, or try something else. Come on. Do it. Please do it. Don’t be like me. Please, please don’t be like me. Don’t be like I thought. Don’t be the way you’ve acted. Change my mind again. I don’t want it to be true. <strong>You </strong>don’t want it to be true. It’s the worst outcome for both of us. Don’t have been telling me the truth, and make all the rest of it a lie. Please. There’s still time. If you’re just monsters, and you’ve changed, there could be hope for all of us. Even you. Just please, please don’t really let me go.</em></p><p>He got to the last knot in the chain, and he didn’t even really falter on it. His moment of indecision had come before the first knot, and he was committed, and past it, and tugged the last loop free, and as the chains fell to the ground, instantly she was the one in control again.</p><p>She let herself feel that for a second. Not the relief of being the one with power, but the weight of what it might really mean that he hadn’t tried to kill her. That was hard to think about. And she didn’t want to. But it wasn’t over quite yet. There was still time. Still just a little time, for things to end some other way. <em>Please.</em></p><p>Giving her a somewhat fearful look, Dwight stood up and took a few steps back now that she was free, hands up and palms out.</p><p>There was no reason to drag out the inevitable, so Adiris closed her hand around the chain to her incense burner and raised up to her full seven plus feet of height and turned to face him.</p><p>They were so small compared to her. Adiris had forgotten, trapped on the ground like that, how much smaller. She thought they had too, because she was <em>towering </em>over them now, and she could see very clearly on their faces that they could <em>feel </em>the power difference. Dwight swallowed, and took another, very slow, step back, eyes fixed on her. Adiris watched him for a moment, then turned and stepped over the jacket Quentin had discarded to keep her vomit from reaching her, and walked to where her headdress had fallen when she was attacked. She stooped and picked it up carefully, checking it for damage, and then ceremoniously and with great precision, ignoring the pain the added weight brought the wound there, set it over her bandaged head again before turning again to face them.</p><p>“Atta naptî nidnam,” said Adiris firmly, meeting Dwight’s gaze and holding her hand out for the key.</p><p>He got it pretty much instantly and fumbled a little digging it out of his pocket, then took a few hesitant steps over, free hand still up, palm-out, and handed her the key.</p><p>Adiris took it and turned her back on him and went over to the door. She stooped, ears perked, listening for the sound of one of them coming over. If they were going to make a last play, this was the time to do it. Play along until the door was unlocked, then hit her while her back was turned, so they could flee with a way out. <em>Try it. Try to kill me. Do it. </em>She inserted the key and channeled it with her energy, then turned it. It clicked in the lock, and she removed it slowly, giving them plenty of time, and then hooked her fingers under the bars and stood, lifting the door with her.</p><p><em>Nothing, </em>thought Adiris, staying there with her back to them and her hand above her, fingers still laced in the metalworking. She felt her stomach lurch and the floor drop out beneath her as still no one came to attack her even with her back turned, and that reality set in.</p><p>She made herself turn to face them, and they were just standing there.</p><p>Alone, several feet back in the tiny room beneath the temple. Cowering a little, waiting to see what she would do to them. Quentin still by the alter, trying to keep an infected appendage away from the rest of his body as plague spread too quickly. If he had just kept the jacket, that would never have happened to him. If he had just not sacrificed it to keep her from getting vomit on herself, as a kindness, he wouldn’t be dying right now. She wondered if he had thought of that yet. And standing between her and his ally, somehow Dwight looked just as vulnerable and beaten and helpless as his dying friend. Shirtless and cold, with the body of a scribe, not a soldier. Looking up and waiting to see if she would choose to have lied to him. So much smaller than her. Wherever they were from, they must have been a much smaller race of people. She wondered if they had even come from the same place as each other at all.</p><p><em>I should have known, </em>thought Adiris, eyes misting up and fighting the urge to let that become real tears, <em>Of course this was the lie. Mortals have never been anything to the Gods. Or maybe it is just I who has never been. One of them would never have spent years watching me, and leading me here to a higher purpose. I don’t think one of them has ever even known that I existed at all. I’m not important enough for that. I wasn’t even important enough to save. Or to answer, even. It was just the story I wanted to hear. It has <span class="u">always</span> been the story I wanted to hear.</em></p><p>Adiris did not think she trusted anyone—human or God—but she knew what she had seen herself. With her eyes. What she had understood of gods and men with her own life. And mortals who killed priests for sport and pleasure did not die to let their enemies go. And it was not Gods who hid in caves on mountainsides, waiting for the dead.</p><p>“Alkānim,” said Adiris quietly, lowering her hand from the gate and motioning them both to come.</p><p>The boys exchanged glances, and then tentatively went. Dwight hanging back about a foot behind her, looking nervous, and Quentin a far enough step to the side of him that he wasn’t in danger of bumping him accidentally. She waited for them to reach the gate, and then turned and walked off, not even looking back to make sure they were following her. They would. There was no danger of them trying to hurt any of the people above them, outside the temple. If they had fled her, they would have just run—back to their own little campfire. But if they did that, the medic would die, so they wouldn’t do it. They would follow her, and she was sure of it now.</p><p>“You should run,” said Quentin quietly behind her. From his tone, she wondered if he was asking the other one why he thought she had suddenly stopped guarding them. He sounded confused.</p><p>“Yeah, I’m going to leave you in the Plague’s temple, infected, <em>with </em>the Plague, and go home alone,” said the leader with heavy sarcasm.</p><p>That had been the term they called her, so Adiris glanced at one of the gold filigrees on a column ahead and caught their reflections in it. The leader was limping along on his bad leg, struggling to keep up, even at her fairly slow pace, but he was still smiling at the medic, who was trying not to smile back. <em>Trying to reassure him, </em>thought Adiris. She had tried to reassure and distract many sick people depending on her before, and she knew the kind of smile the leader was giving. Friendly, and comforting, but sad behind the eyes where he just hadn’t been able to quite bury the real emotion.</p><p>Adiris kept walking straight, and like she had thought, the foreigners followed her. Heaving realized they were being forced to hurry a little to keep up with her long strides and the leader was having some painful trouble doing that, she slowed her pace down a bit. It wasn’t a large temple, like the one in Babylon had been, although the version here, in her home area, was larger than the versions of it in rituals. Still, it wasn’t big enough to take long to go anywhere, and even walking quite slowly, she found the room she’d been seeking quickly.</p><p><em>Hmm—I need to do this fast, but I can’t yet, </em>thought Adiris, reaching for the bottle she’d spotted on a high cubby in the far wall and pausing when she noticed the bits of vomit still on her own arm. She grimaced, and went to the far side of the room instead, and picked up a large earthenware jar, heavy enough to need two arms to lift it, then turned back to the boys, who had paused a few steps into the room and were watching her nervously.</p><p>“Nērānim,” said Adiris. They exchanged anxious glances and looked back at her blankly. <em>Right. </em>She set down the basin, pointed at them, and made a ‘<em>Turn Around’ </em>gesture with a finger. They exchanged anxious glances again.</p><p>“Uh,” said Dwight.</p><p>“Nērānim!” said Adiris a lot more forcefully.</p><p>They turned around.</p><p>“Is this what she wants?” mumbled Quentin.</p><p>“I think so,” said Dwight.</p><p>“I hate this. I feel like I’m going to get stabbed,” muttered Quentin.</p><p>“Yeah…” agreed Dwight unhappily.</p><p>Adiris watched them suspiciously for a second, but they stayed put, so she picked the basin up and dumped it over her head slowly, washing off the bits of rot and offal on her. Both boys jerked when they heard the sound of water pouring, and she thought one of them was going to turn around, so she called out, “Lā!” in a heavily warning tone, and they quit moving.</p><p>Pretty sure she was clean enough not to infect the young man on contact now, Adiris took a cloth and wrapped it around herself quickly to get the majority of the moisture, then tossed it aside and straightened up.</p><p>“Inanna alkānim,” said Adiris much more welcomingly.</p><p>Interpreting the tone of voice, the boys very hesitantly and slowly turned around, and then came over a little closer when this seemed to be the wanted reaction. On her way to take the bottle from its cubby again, Adiris gave them a nod, pointed to a little stool, and then to Quentin. “Šibam.”</p><p>He hesitantly did what she’d said, and sat down, watching her with some amount of anxiety, but with something else too. It was something a little like surprise, but a much deeper feeling than that. Adiris understood it, but she had never known the name for such a feeling. It was the way she had felt a long time ago, seeing the statue of Ishtar with her arms held out for her—the very sign she had been waiting so long to see. The way she had felt being given life again, at Nergal’s feet, when she had thought she was beyond all hope. A kind of surprised and deeply affected together that was only felt when you were given some sort of kindness by something powerful or fearful that you had never thought would extend a kindness to a person like you. It made her sad to see it. She had not ever thought before she was a kind of thing in the category that could cause a look like that, and she was not in it now because she was powerful; she was in it because she was fearful to them.</p><p>Trying to ignore that as much as she could, Adiris took the bottle and went over to the medic and knelt, then gently held out her palm for his arm. He gave it to her hesitantly, pretty sure what the motion meant, and Adiris turned the forearm over and looked at the damage. It had spread already along nearly a full half of his forearm. The skin had become cracked and rough, rotted. There were inflamed little sacs of puss starting to form along the infection site, and the purple rot was still expanding before her eyes. It was easy to understand why he looked as scared as he did. This had been scary enough for her to go through in a normal span of time, back in Babylon. Still, it hadn’t spread far yet, and she was relatively sure she had enough supplies to cleanse that.</p><p>She locked eyes with the boy and held up a hand as a sign for him to stay still, and he gave a nod.</p><p><em>I have not done this before, </em>thought Adiris nervously, pouring some of the water from the little bottle into a rag, and trying hard not to really touch the wet part herself. The pools of devotion in rituals healed the foreigners of her disease instantly, and this was the same water, so it <em>should </em>work, but she had never actually tried to use it for that. Outside of rituals, Adiris had no access to the fountains, and the only reason she had any of the water from them at all was to use as a base for some of the rituals she performed for Nergal between the major sacrifices. So. She had not actually <em>seen </em>this work. And for all her praying and trying and believing, her track record for healing people who depended on her was unfathomably disheartening. But even knowing that, simply because the water worked so instantly inside of rituals, it hadn’t even occurred to Adiris until just now when she was halfway through doing this, that it might actually fail. It had occurred <em>now</em> though, and the thought had hit hard. <em>And they will think I did this on purpose, </em>she thought, her anxiety building.</p><p>Trying not to think about that, Adiris set the rag over the infected skin on his arm and wrapped it in place, doing her best to look confident in what she was doing.</p><p><em>I should pray. </em>That would have been how she did this back in Babylon, when she had done this for real—healed—or—<em>tried </em>to heal for real. But who would she pray <em>to </em>anymore? Not Enki, not Nergal. <em>Probably no matter who, none of them will hear me. They cannot have ever heard me before, or cared. And I am so little compared to them. I am not even a human of importance. –But, </em>she told herself desperately, clinging to it like a torch in a dark cavern, <em>—but then, I am alone somewhere so bad right now. It must be a part of Er</em><em>ṣ</em><em>etu, a worse part I did not even know of, for them to die on and on like this, and nothing to come and stop us. And Ishtar journeyed to Er</em><em>ṣ</em><em>etu alone once. </em></p><p>She felt her heart miss a beat.</p><p><em>Yes</em>, Adiris remembered with a slow building terror that was heavy and like a stone tied to her ankles, dragging her with it to the bottom of the sea, <em>And when Ishtar finally reached the base of it, she was overtaken by every disease in Er</em><em>ṣ</em><em>etu, and executed there, and her corpse was hung. On a hook.</em></p><p>M-Maybe she would care, then. Maybe, if any God would ever have been human enough to recognize the horror of this moment and feel any amount of fleeting empathy, she would have been it. She had <em>always </em>seemed very human to Adiris, in ways. Sometimes bad ways, but Adiris would take that in a heartbeat over the cold detachment from everything else. And she had fought for mortals before. Maybe it could matter. Maybe, since she had been <em>right here, </em>in this unimaginable horror too, maybe. <em>Maybe</em>…</p><p>Adiris shut her eyes, trying to do the thing that had suddenly become <em>so </em>hard to her and believe, and placed her hand over the cloth. “Ina qibītīki Ištar ušteššerē tenēšēte. Marṣu iballuṭ āmiru pānīki. Ippaṭṭar eʾiltašu itebbi arḫiš. Ina qibītīki Ištar lā nāṭilu immar nūra. Iššer Ištar lā išaru āmiru pānīki. Apputtum, teštemîanni.” As she spoke, she poured more of the water onto the rag and let it soak through and into the skin beneath. <em>With your command, Ishtar, mortals are made right. The sick who sees your face is restored to life. He is freed from his bonds, he arises quickly. With your command, Ishtar, the blind can see the light. They become whole, Ishtar, the unwell who look upon your face. Hear me, please.</em></p><p>That last line wasn’t meant to be in the prayer, and there were many more verses than that in the way the ritual was meant to be done, but it had been what felt right in the moment to her. The prayer shouldn’t be needed for the water to work at all, and if the goddess would hear her, Adiris thought the plea would be the thing she would have listened to.</p><p>When she finished speaking and looked up, the boy was holding perfectly still and watching her with big eyes. Carefully, Adiris removed the cloth, using the talons on her rings so she wouldn’t have to touch it with her skin. They both looked down, and she saw surprise and overwhelming relief on the boy’s face as he took in the sight of clean, undamaged skin. Nothing but a faint line, a white little circular raised scar in the heart, where the abrasions had been deepest, to show anything unusual had ever been there at all.</p><p>His breathing sped up a little, but not in a bad way, like fear, and looked back into her face—very differently this time. Grateful, she realized.</p><p><em>“Tadalīlî,” </em>whispered Adiris under her breath, feeling a little grateful herself. <em>Thank you.</em> Maybe she had heard her.</p><p>“Thank you,” said the boy quietly, still anxious of provoking her by doing the wrong thing.</p><p>Adiris wasn’t sure if that was a question, or a token of thanks. Her impulse would have been to guess he was asking her why she had helped him, but she remembered then that ‘Why’ was the only word she thought she <em>had </em>picked up in their tongue, and it did not sound like that. Maybe she was wrong, though. Or there were simply multiple ways to say it.</p><p>“She did it?” asked the leader, coming up carefully behind and a bit to the side, skirting her.</p><p>“Yeah,” said the medic, smiling over shakily at his friend. He turned the arm for him to see.</p><p>The leader turned to Adiris and there was relief and a good deal of gratitude in his expression as well. “Thank you for this,” he said seriously to her, looking like he really meant what he was saying.</p><p><em>That was almost the same phrase, </em>thought Adiris, echoing the sound in her head. Probably thanks, then. She inclined her head, and he seemed a little surprised—not like the response had been wrong, just like he hadn’t thought she’d give him one period—but then he gave her what was almost a cautious smile.</p><p>“So.” Quentin glanced from Dwight to Adiris. “…What happens now?”</p><p>“I have. …No idea,” said Dwight, still watching Adiris, “We could try to walk out I guess, and see if she stops us. It’s worth a try. Whatever she wants, she’s at least calm now, so she’d probably just stop us, instead of attack us to make us stop—if we don’t run, anyway.”</p><p>Adiris looked from one to the other, thinking. A lot of thoughts were speeding through her mind at once, down different paths, and towards different goals. She had not wanted to end up here. She still didn’t feel like she really had. She kept waiting for none of this to be real, or for something to fall into place to make it all make sense, but she felt very sure, somewhere deep down in her chest, that even if she had never been significant enough to be meant to be a major player in any narrative, even her own life, she was nevertheless at the place where if she really had been in an epic like she had felt this morning, she would have reached the part of that story on which all of the things which came after hinged. A crossroads. And if she did not pick a course to begin heading down, very shortly, something would happen, and that decision would be made forever for her.</p><p>“You still can’t run if that fails though, can you?” Quentin asked Dwight worriedly.</p><p>“I can try,” said Dwight, “It’ll hurt, but I think I could run a short way without giving up and collapsing.”</p><p>As she tried to sort out the oncoming decisions that were almost too heavy to face, Adiris wondered in a detached, passively sad way what they were saying to each other. They looked more nervous again, like they had before she had healed the medic’s arm, and she caught the medic giving the leader’s injured leg a worried look. <em>Right. </em>They weren’t in the best shape right now, because she had hurt them. Adiris glanced over the foreigners again slowly, really taking in the injured leg on the leader and a bruise forming on his stomach that could only be from where she had kicked him twice, the dark purple marks and little cuts around the medic’s throat.</p><p>Adiris felt her heart sink a bit, and she exhaled quietly and straightened up. Both foreigners stopped talking and looked at her in the kind of tense, readied pre-action a prey animal took to at the first sign of danger it was expecting to have to flee. She didn’t go towards them at all, though.</p><p>Turning, she instead simply motioned for them to follow, and then went. One of them said something she didn’t quite catch the sound of, but she didn’t stop to check or try to give them an answer; she didn’t check to make sure they would follow her either, like she hadn’t before, intent and focused on trying to formulate a plan inside her head, and then halfway through her first room, she realized they really might just run this time, and if they did, she might never get them back again, and everything that had been distracting her went out of her head at once and she whirled around, heart racing, to find them both about four paces back, trailing warily after her, and startled by her whipping around on them, they both jumped and fell back a little, tense and afraid.</p><p>
  <em>Izzirtu! Stupid—stupid—now look at them.</em>
</p><p>Trying to be reassuring, Adiris held up a palm towards them calmingly, and then beckoned them closer. They exchanged looks, then did what she’d asked, and came until they were almost abreast of her, and she turned then and started to walk again, now that she could see them out of the corner of her eyes and know they weren’t vanished. She could tell they were both tense still—ready to fight or flee, though they did neither. Honestly, she…wondered why? It would have made more sense to run from her than to follow. <em>They have to realize that. Or they will, in a second.</em></p><p>As they went out one room and into another, Adiris caught one of the boys glancing off towards their right, and she made out the center chamber just barely, a little ways off.</p><p><em>Oh… You don’t know your way down here, </em>she realized, heart sinking, <em>Because it’s not like it is in rituals. That’s why. You haven’t run yet because you weren’t sure you could find the stairs before I caught up to you if you did.</em></p><p>They <em>would</em> run, then, and it was just a matter of time.</p><p>Adiris took a long stride to be ahead of them again, then stopped walking and turned to face the boys.</p><p>They stopped walking too, nervous and tense, and looked back with an unpleasant looking mixture of caution, wariness, and dread.</p><p>Searching both their faces for a second, Adiris started to make a motion, and then hesitated. So much had happened so fast, she hadn’t had time to really think about any of it, or her odds of making it through, but seeing the learned fear and aversion for her on their faces, she was so painfully aware of how much and how impossible it would be to overcome. She had made it as far as she had on confidence, and conviction, and determination, but those had been based in the belief that she was qualified—that she had a destiny and value and ability, and none of that had been true in the end, so there was nothing to believe in anymore at all, and she knew it. And without belief, all there was an overwhelming sense of abandonment and emptiness and fear, like she was waiting for the world itself to kill her. …<em>I can’t do this. I don’t know how. They’re never going to stick around long enough to believe me, unless I force them, but if I force them, they’ll never trust me at all. And even if I could, it wouldn’t matter. What do I really think I can accomplish? Maybe I should just let them go.</em></p><p>As soon as she had thought that though, there was a little voice in her chest that said, “<em>No. No, fuck that. I’m not giving up. I’ll die either way, but I’ll die fighting to live, not waiting to be killed. I’m angry. I’m angry, and I’m going to try. I’m going to <span class="u">win,</span>” </em>and she knew the voice was wrong, and there was no way to win at all, but it also sounded more like her than her own thoughts did right now, and it was encouraging, to at least have herself as an ally to fall back upon. Maybe it was right.</p><p>Still. It had been a bad day for everyone, and things were so fragile right now. And she had no real idea how to fix it. Sometimes what the foreigners had done had surprised her, not just today but many times in the past—and today especially, though, but she could not count on that. Anyone with sense would flee here as soon as the opportunity was decent enough to be a real chance at escape. How was she supposed to stop that? She wanted to, because she wanted to fight, but she just wasn’t seeing any options other than taking them by force, and that would end just as badly, only in a different way.</p><p><em>… What would have worked. On me. </em>She glanced into the leader’s face, thinking hard, searching for an answer. He was still watching, looking concerned and cautious, if maybe a little less immediately afraid, because it had been a few seconds now, and she hadn’t done anything at all yet—even speak, which seemed to, while confusing, be better than whatever he’d expected her to do. Usually, what would have worked on you was not very guaranteed to work on other people, but this one seemed so often to react in ways she recognized because she had done the same thing or something very similar herself, so. So maybe if she could think of an answer that would have worked on her, it could work on him too. <em>What would I have listened to? Something I believed in. Something I could put faith in. Something I recognized. </em>Which for Adiris, almost universally, meant unshakable physical proof, or her gut. And since she <em>had </em>no unshakable physical proof to hand him, meant her only option would be to appeal to <em>his </em>gut. Meant an actual, common appeal to simple faith, which felt so hopeless after all this, but he <em>had </em>listened to her and trusted her in the alter chamber, even knowing she was likely to be lying and to kill him. So <em>maybe</em> he could do it again.</p><p>Still afraid this would be the wrong way to try to convince them, but running out of time to find anything else because the silence had already lasted far too long, Adiris followed her impulse and took a knee.</p><p>Both of them reacted to that with surprise, but they didn’t bolt. Just seemed nervous and confused, and then even more so when she reached out and placed a hand on each of their shoulders.</p><p>“Anāku aedû attunu ašmamkunūti,” said Adiris slowly, releasing them to gesture as she did, trying to help them understand. She pointed to herself, then made a stabbing motion, and pointed to them.<em> I know I’ve hurt you.</em> She paused a moment, then shook her head. “Inanna anāku ul ašammamkunūti,” continued Adiris, still shaking her head, <em>But I’m not going to attack you anymore. You aren’t going to be hurt, </em>“Attunu ul tammaḫḫāṣakunūti.” She pointed to the injury on Dwight’s leg, and then herself, and shook her head at them again. “Anāku,” said Adiris very slowly, pointing to herself again and pausing between the words for clear emphasis. “Attunu.” She pointed to them. “Akaššukunūšim.” Praying this would work, that they would at least understand what she was <em>trying </em>to tell them, Adiris bowed her head for a second solemnly, then looked up and extended her hands towards them—not like she might pull them up, or needed them to follow, but in the way someone held out a hand if they wanted to help, or to make peace. To agree to be together on something. <em>Please. Please understand me.</em></p><p>The two young men exchanged looks. They looked kind of stunned, but they were taking it seriously at least, she could tell, and they hadn’t fled yet.</p><p>“Are you…apologizing?” asked the leader cautiously. He glanced at his own hand, then his friend, then extended his hand slowly and placed it in hers, checking immediately after to try to see in her face if that was what she had wanted.</p><p>She smiled at him, greatly relieved, hoping it meant he’d understood. She hadn’t really been sure how to communicate, ‘<em>I will help you</em>’ in the moment with a gesture, but maybe that had been enough.</p><p>“I don’t understand totally what you’re saying either,” said the medic, smiling at her a little, but still looking pretty worried at the same time, “And I’m sure you have no idea what I’m saying now. But I got the first part of that was that you aren’t going to hurt us. And. You made good so far, so. I’ll…” He glanced at the leader, then back at her, and placed his hand cautiously in hers as well. “Trust you enough to give whatever it is you said a chance. …<em>Please</em> don’t be lying?” he added, smiling in a way that was worried and a little friendly and very sad all at once.</p><p>
  <em>Excellent. This went much better than I hoped! I think. Alright! Okay.</em>
</p><p>Heart thudding, Adiris tried to smile at both of them and then placed her hands on their shoulders again for a moment and gave a quick squeeze. “Tadalīluā.” She shut her eyes and clasped her hands and bowed her head for an instant with the word to try to communicate the thanks in a way they might understand, then stood back up. “Alkānim,” she said much more quietly and with purpose, making a ‘<em>Follow me’ </em>gesture, and then putting her finger to her lips before turning and starting to walk again.</p><p>She heard them following and tried hard to make that enough and to fight the urge to keep checking over her shoulder, because she knew that would only make them suspicious that she was up to something. <em>Come on. Just keep walking. It’s not far now. They won’t run away.</em></p><p>“Why would she say to stay quiet?” asked the medic in a hushed tone. Definitely a question, but she could also tell from his tone that he was asking his ally, not her.</p><p>“I don’t know,” answered the leader, something new and hard to place in his tone of voice, “But that can only be good, right? The only things that would hear us down here are her people out in the yard, or the Entity. And both of those are on her side, not ours. So, she’s not worried about anyone who <em>likes </em>us hearing anyway.”</p><p>“Maybe…she really will let us go,” said the medic, hopeful about whatever he was saying, and almost encouraged too—like he might actually believe it, “If. If she doesn’t want her people to hear, that would mean maybe she changed her mind, and they’d be upset. She said something to the crowd on the way down. Maybe. Maybe she was going to keep us here, but since we let her go, she’ll let us go too.”</p><p>There was no reply from the leader for a moment, and curious, Adiris looked for his reflection in one of the decorative metal inlays they passed, and saw him deep in thought, but looking better, almost relieved, in a real way.</p><p>“God, I hope so,” he whispered back after a second.</p><p>Finding the doorway she’d wanted up ahead, Adiris turned a sharp left and led them down a hall and into the last chamber on the right, way at the back. It was a circular room perhaps a little smaller than the chamber with the alter had been, full of cubbies with tablets in them, and had a table in the center for viewing and writing, and chairs too, already set around the table. Only she had ever been down here, but it had been meant for many scribes at once—just like the one she had remembered from so much time researching and reading back home in the temple where she had grown up, so it had always been this way.</p><p>“Tawašābušā,” said Adiris quietly, indicating the chairs.</p><p>The young men gave her questioning, slightly cautious looks, and then glanced at each other and slowly entered the room, looking about at the walls and the items stacked up in them.</p><p>“Atâruanni,” said Adiris, holding up a hand reassuringly, and then backing up a step to return to the hall.</p><p>To her shock, both foreigners <em>instantly</em> panicked.</p><p>“No, no, no, no,” said Dwight, abandoning the stacked tablets he’d been looking at and shooting towards her and the doorway the second he realized what she was doing. Quentin had been even closer, and he made it to her first, and then stopped just barely short of colliding with her, breathing fast, suddenly apparently realizing he hadn’t had a follow up plan to sprinting over. Dwight reached them a half second later, stumbling on his bad leg, and did the same, catching himself on the doorframe and Quentin not to plow into her, and giving Adiris a frantic look.</p><p>Eyes big, she held up her hands and shook her head at them, trying to get them to calm down, and gestured to the waiting room again hopefully.</p><p>“No offense,” said Dwight, holding up his hands palm out the way she was, still looking incredibly on-edge and shaking his head, “But we do <em>not </em>want to get locked in a room here again.”</p><p>Confused, Adiris tilted her head, trying to understand which part of this had triggered the extreme panic. She tried to gesture back into the room, and they looked back at it this time, but they still didn’t go.</p><p>“Look, uh—” started Dwight nervously.</p><p>“There’s no gate on this one,” said Quentin.</p><p>Dwight glanced over at him, and saw him looking up, and did the same. Adiris, curious, followed suit. There was nothing there, though. Just the smooth stone archway above. It wasn’t even decorative. <em>OH. Oh—Oh, I get it!</em></p><p>Adiris tapped Dwight’s shoulder, and when he glanced at her, held out a palm and made a motion like she was writing on her hand. Getting it instantly, Dwight fished his little notebook out of a pocket and handed it to her.</p><p>Quickly, Adiris flipped to a blank page and drew an archway and put bars over it, blocking the door, and turned the page to face them and gave a questioning look.</p><p>“Uh,” said Dwight.</p><p>Not really waiting for a reply she could understand, Adiris crossed out the picture and shook her head, tried to give him a reassuring look, and returned the book. He took it back carefully, still looking overwhelmed, and glanced up at her.</p><p>“Atâruanni,” she said again reassuringly, holding her hands back up, and she took another step back into the hall and waited to see if they would stay.</p><p>They did not stay. Both young men automatically took little half-steps after her, like they were trying to ready themselves to catch a slamming door, and then hesitated and exchanged looks. There was <em>so </em>much worry on their faces. She had known they were in bad shape, but so much had been happening, she hadn’t <em>really</em> taken in the damage there beyond the physical yet—hadn’t really gotten just how not only beat up, but strung out and exhausted and haggard they both were from everything they’d gone through in the last few hours. Feeling sympathy and some amount of guilt and regret for that at the sight, Adiris lowered her arms and relented. “Alkānim,” she said as kindly as she could, in an ‘<em>Alright, come along then’ </em>tone of voice, motioning them to come with her.</p><p>She turned then, and heard them fall cautiously into step with her, hanging maybe two feet back. Adiris glanced over her shoulder and saw Quentin helping Dwight walk again, and slowed her pace a little, accommodating for the leader’s injured leg as she wound down two halls, then slipped into room with supplies for the temple. The foreigners hesitated in the doorway, since she hadn’t <em>asked </em>them to come inside, but she saw them squinting at the dark space with some amount of curiosity and apprehension. Taking in unused tablets, seals, vases and urns, containers of plants and oils and ingredients for rituals. Adiris found some salve and cloth and things to clean a wound with quickly, but she had to dig to get the rest of what she was looking for, and it took a couple seconds. Once she had it all though, she got her supplies into a box to make it easier to carry, folded the fabric she’d picked out, and stood back up with her arms full.</p><p>When they saw her coming, the boys moved back out of the way, trying to figure out what she was holding now and why, she was pretty sure.</p><p>“Alkānim,” said Adiris again, making a ‘<em>Come along’ </em>motion with her head and starting back off the way they’d just come. The boys exchanged glances and followed. <em>Well. At least they’re not running away. </em>She glanced ruefully over her shoulder at them. That in and of itself was a little bit of a miracle. The leader was looking bad, though. Sweating from the effort of even just slowly walking, and noticing that, she glanced down and saw the there was a little blood leaking down his leg and into his shoes, and she stopped.</p><p>“I-it’s fine,” said Dwight, following her glace, “It’s not so bad.”</p><p>
  <em>Izzirtu. I should not have let them follow me. </em>
</p><p>“Bilam,” said Adiris, turning to Quentin and holding out her armful of stuff.</p><p>“Uhm—” said Quentin, hesitating, but when she repeated the gesture, he awkwardly let go of Dwight to take it from her, “Do you—You want me to carry this for you, right?”</p><p>Adiris was pretty sure he was asking for confirmation in some way, so she gave him a nod, and then walked over to Dwight and picked him up.</p><p>“W-hey-hey-hey-hey-hey! No-no—you don’t—,” protested Dwight rapid-fire as he realized about 0.6 seconds too late what she was going to do and got lifted into the air. He didn’t fight her to get free, but he gave her a deeply uncomfortable and nervous look. “…Oh. Okay. …Uh. Look. I-I appreciate you’re trying to help me not walk on the leg, I think, but uh, you really don’t have to do this.”</p><p>By the end of his sentence, she had already walking. They were pretty close, and she could tell he was protesting in some way, but she had no idea what exactly he was saying or how to answer him, and she wasn’t going to put him down and let him damage the leg more when it was so easy to carry him.</p><p>“O…okay,” he said quietly in defeat, looking kind of nervous and miserable. He wrapped his arms around himself and tried not to look at her.</p><p>Seeing that, Adiris’ first impulse was that he was cold, but he looked more miserable than cold. Thinking about it and a little confused by how much he seemed to dislike being carried by her, she was remembering suddenly how it had felt to be seen without her headdress, and in such an undignified and humiliating way. Guiltily, she worried then that maybe it was similar for him. It was hard to tell what was clothing and what was uniform with the foreigners, but really, she had no idea at all. And either way, they had both sacrificed comfort at least, maybe also dignity, to help her. She hoped it wasn’t like that, because if it was, there was little she could do to give him <em>back </em>what he’d lost. She didn’t have anything like it at all. It would make a lot of sense for him to be uncomfortable being seen or touched without it if it had been, though—and either way, whatever his reason, he <em>was</em> definitely deeply uncomfortable, and didn’t want her to look at him, and that was the one thing she could do for him, so she didn’t. She averted her eyes and kept them strictly on the hall ahead.</p><p>“Sorry—are you okay?” asked Quentin, having to hurry to keep up with his arms full now that Adiris wasn’t going slowly at all anymore with no injured leg to compensate for.</p><p>“Yeah,” said Dwight like an exhale, “I guess. I just never have any idea what she’s about to do to me, and it’s fraying my nerves. I think she’s trying to help. God, I hope she’s trying to help.”</p><p>Quentin glanced up at Adiris. “I…think she is. She hasn’t seemed mad since we let her out. Right? She doesn’t seem mad <em>now.</em>”</p><p>Thinking maybe he was trying to talk to her, Adiris glanced down at him and tried to smile to put him at ease. She must have done a bad job, though, because it pretty immediately seemed to have the opposite effect, and he looked twice as nervous, and glanced away. She felt her heart sink a little and refocused on the path ahead. It was only one more hall, and then they were back inside the archives.</p><p>Once inside, Adiris set Dwight gently down by one of the chairs, then turned to Quentin. “Idiam,” she said, pointing him in the direction of the table to set the box down. He did so, then backed around the table to get to his friend without going past her. Not openly scared, but careful.</p><p><em>That’s okay. It’s to be expected, </em>Adiris tried to tell herself, going over to the box and taking out supplies. She dunked a washcloth in a little container of water, then walked over to Quentin and held it out to him.</p><p>“Uh,” he said, hesitantly reaching a hand out to take it. She could see pretty clearly on his face he had no idea what it was for, and her hopes faded a little. Trying, she held her hand up to her neck, looking pointedly at the cloth as she did.</p><p>Uncertainly, Quentin watched that, then took the cloth and held it up to his neck, wincing a little. The bruising there was so deep, and ugly. She’d cut into his skin in several more places with her rings than she’d noticed before too, now that she was seeing the wound closer up.</p><p><em>I really didn’t know, </em>thought Adiris as a heavy load of guilt settled on her. “Adrakanni,” she said quietly to him, looking from the bruises she had left, to his face, and trying to look sorry too.</p><p>He seemed surprised by that, and a little uncertain. “Uhm,” he offered hesitantly after a second, “Thank you. I think. I’m sorry for…uhm…I-I guess I’m not really sorry I healed you,” he kept going awkwardly, “because you’d be dead, I think. But, uh. I’m sorry if I didn’t understand. What was going on back there. I definitely hurt you, somehow, because you hated what I did, and I still don’t really get that, but, whatever I did that hurt you, I really didn’t mean to. I was just trying to help. And I’m sorry.”</p><p>“You know she can’t understand you, right?” asked Dwight, looking a little endeared and also like whatever he’d said might be poking fun at his ally.</p><p>“Yeah—I—but what am I supposed to say?” said Quentin defensively. He glanced back at Adiris and gave her a little head bow she thought had to be either to communicate thanks, or an official gracious accepting of the gift, either of which was a relief to her. “Thank you,” said Quentin again.</p><p>They had said that several times. <em>It <strong>must</strong> be thanks, </em>she decided, close to sure now.</p><p>She gave him a nod and straightened back up and went to get her cloth from the table.</p><p>“Does it help?” Dwight asked Quentin curiously.</p><p>“I dunno—doesn’t hurt,” offered Quentin, still holding the cloth up to his bruises, “It’s cool. I know you put ice on bruises if you can, to keep the swelling down. I don’t know if ‘<em>cool</em>’ helps the way cold would, but it feels nice.”</p><p>“Good. Is your throat—Ooohhh what is this?” asked Dwight worriedly, clocking Adiris getting close to him only after she was already right beside him, and jumping a little when he turned to find her holding a large white cloth out.</p><p>Adiris extended her arms a little encouragingly, trying to give the item to him.</p><p>“Uh.” Hesitantly, he took it, and then looked at it in confusion as it unrolled a little and hung there in an odd shape.</p><p>“Talitbuškum,” tried Adiris, making a wrapping motion around herself.</p><p>The foreigner was giving her the most blank, completely lost look.</p><p><em>You really do know <span class="u">absolutely nothing</span> about Akkadians—culture, language, dress, </em>she thought hopelessly. It wasn’t like she hadn’t already been sure that was the truth, or as close as she was ever going to get to feeling sure about anything ever again, but it hurt to see it. She had been so <em>completely </em>convinced they were what Nergal had said they were. But they were something else entirely. And whatever they were, wherever they had come from, they were so far from home and stolen and lost, they did not even understand the most basic of things she was doing, or that the being that had trapped them here was doing to them. Adiris was no stranger to feeling helpless and hopeless and out of her depth, but she had never been so lost that she did not even know who the person hurting her was, could not even <em>guess </em>at why they were doing it. How lonely that must feel. And she felt horrible, for having been for so long one of the things they were badly afraid of. Horrible, but also angry. A deep, dark, boiling-over kind of rage, like a spark in a room soaked in oil, ready to go up in flames and consume everything at once in a second, when before there had been no fire at all. <em>How <strong><span class="u">dare</span></strong> you. How <strong><span class="u">fucking dare you.</span></strong> </em>She had done <em>everything, </em>every single thing she could have, since the day she was born, to try to please the gods, and to matter, to be worth something, to find a purpose in life—done <em>every </em>last thing she could think of to save her followers and herself—had banished herself from her own city and temple and led them on a pilgrimage to the gateway of Erṣetu, on foot, dying in the mountains of Urashtu in the fleeting hope of finding it to reach the Gods of the underworld themselves. And it hadn’t even been enough to just let her fail and die. And She. Was. Mad. She was <em>furious </em>about it. She wanted to take her incense burner and call Nergal or whatever Utukku he was, and beat him to death with it like Gilgamesh of old, but that was stupid—that was insane—she had to get that rage back under control, and think. <em>You are not a two-thirds God; you cannot fight like Gilgamesh. Calm down. Think.</em></p><p>She made herself do that, and came out of her head to see the leader putting the garment she’d given him hesitantly over his shoulders like a blanket. She sighed deeply internally, and some of the anger gave way to guilt and pity again, and she carefully reached out a hand.</p><p>He saw her reach for him, and faltered—nervous of her, but she put her other hand up palm out, and he didn’t pull away. Gently, she took the drape back and then stepped forward and stooped to wrap it for him. The young man stiffened when she reached for him, and then flinched at her touch, but he didn’t pull away. It hurt to see that—to see someone so afraid of you that they would anticipate harm from you on a biological level and shudder at your touch, no matter how reassuring you tried to be, but she supposed she deserved that. After all, she had truly earned that place in his eyes. Even when she had not hurt him when she started to wrap the fabric, she was very aware of how tense he was staying, and the way his breathing had sped up a little, and the guilt deepened and she kept her eyes on the fabric instead of his face as she put it on him. Trying hard to be gentle, and move slowly, she wound the garment around his waist first, fastening it with the strap there that served as a belt, then draped the smaller wing corner up across his chest and over his left shoulder so that the brocade and tassels sewn in hung where they should over his heart, then wrapped the other, longer wing corner up across his back and over the left shoulder so that it fell in front of the sash across his chest and hung there over the left side of his chest and over his left arm both at once, almost like a sleeve and cloak together. She tied the support straps on both pieces together at the shoulder so they would stay, then took a step back, proud of her work, and hoping he would accept it.</p><p>“Uhm,” said Dwight, who had stayed quiet and very still the whole time she was wrapping it—she thought probably out of fear of being hurt if he didn’t. Robe on now, and her a foot back and a safer distance from him, the young man glanced down at himself and cautiously raised and shifted his arms a little and took a half-step sideways, trying to get a feel for how the thing hung, and see it. It was a bit of an odd fit, because he was so short. She had chosen a small one, but even so, to get it to fit around his chest right, it had had to be a bit long—even for a priest’s garment—and it hung almost to his ankles. Maybe it was a little wrong to give a foreigner one of the robes they saved for working in the temple, but he had nothing else to wear, and she had wanted to do it. It was a pretty garment, layered skirt a long one, belt inlayed with gold, as were the borders of the chest and sleeve pieces. Heavily decorative gold pattern across the chest, a bit like her own. Still confused, the young man looked back up at her then, and she couldn’t tell if there was more appreciation or fear in the look. “…Why?”</p><p>That was the one word she <em>had</em> learned, so she understood him this time, and her heart sunk a little more at the question. At least he had said it like he was worried, though, not angry, or unhappy, or accusing. That was something. He might still not trust or see her as anything but an adversary and source of suffering at all, but she at least had not done something wrong, or taboo, in offering the gift then. In answer to his question, Adiris reached up and touched the shredded shirt of his that was wound around her head, then tapped it lightly with a finger, holding his gaze.</p><p>“Oh,” said Dwight, looking suddenly overwhelmed, but seeming to get that. For a second, he glanced away, thinking, then he looked back at her. “Thank you.”</p><p>Adiris was pretty sure she understood that one too, and feeling overwhelming relief because the thanks meant he had decided to really accept the gift, she gave a nod and tried to smile at him.</p><p>He looked even more surprised by that, and nervous for just a second, and then he cautiously and kind of weakly smiled a little bit back.</p><p><em>Yes! That one went well. I could… </em>Trying hard to remember the way he had sounded, Adiris touched the bandage around her head again and offered a faltering, “Tahank ya’u.”</p><p>The leader’s eyes went wide, but in an excited way this time even more than taken aback, and for a second he just stared at her, and then he very happily, almost laughing on the first syllable, said, “Holy shit.” He glanced at his friend, and Adiris glanced over too and saw him watching with similarly huge eyes.</p><p>“Did you just—” started Quentin, hurrying a few steps closer, and then hesitating again when he realized that he was about to impulsively step into easy melee distance.</p><p>“You’re welcome,” said Dwight, turning from his friend back to her, and looking much more relaxed than even a few seconds ago, if still not completely at ease. “Uh—‘Thank you’—how do <em>you—</em>?” He hesitated, having started to gesture to try to talk with his hands, and apparently not been able to think of a way to communicate what he wanted. “How do you say, ‘Thank you,’ in Babylonian?” he tried, gesturing to her at <em>‘Babylonian.</em>’ “‘Thank you’ – Babylonian?”</p><p>“’Dalīlu,’” offered Adiris, feeling fairly sure what he was asking and a little hopeful because he had wanted to know, “’Dalīlu’— ‘Tahank ya’u.’”</p><p>“Daleelu?” asked Dwight. She gave a nod, excited he’d gotten it right on his first try. He nodded back, and then took a handful of the loose fabric in the sleeve of the garment she’d given him, and raised it. “Daleelu. And for uh, for not killing us,” he added, giving her a weak smile again, “But I’m not sure how to get that part across yet.”</p><p>Incredibly excited about how well this had unexpectedly just started to go, Adiris nodded back. Something suddenly occurred to her. “—Tahank ya’u…” she hesitated, thinking only after she’d started to ask about how exactly to get the question across. “Dalīlu…ul ‘Babylon’.” She shook her head. “Babylon…” Adiris gestured broadly to the space around them, and gave a nod. “Dalīlu…” She touched her lips, then moved the hand from her lips, towards him a bit. “‘Akkadû.’”</p><p>“Uh—‘Akkadu?’” echoed Dwight. She nodded. He pointed to her and made a motion with his hand like a mouth speaking and asked again, “Akkadu?”</p><p>Adiris nodded again, and then waited a second before repeating her original question. “Dalīlu – Akkadû. ‘Tahank ya’u’ – …?” She tried mimicking his hand gesture and pointing to him and Quentin.</p><p>“Oh!” said Quentin excitedly to her, then Dwight, “Oh—‘What language’! English,” he added, turning back to her. “‘Thank you’ – ‘English.’”</p><p>“Īnglish?” echoed Adiris worriedly. Both boys nodded. <em>Oh no. But. I. I’ve never even fucking <strong><span class="u">heard</span></strong> of a language called that, </em>thought Adiris in a fairly large quantity of dismay. How far away had they <em>come </em>from? She had been well educated, in the temple. She had been sure until Quentin opened his mouth just now that she would have known at least the <em>name </em>of the language they spoke. “Īnglish?”</p><p>“Yes,” said Quentin, giving another nod.</p><p>“…’Babylon’…?” She gestured to the area around them, and then to them themselves, asking the same kind of question, and hoping with a lot of worry for a hit this time.</p><p>The boys exchanged looks of the kind as if they knew something she did not, and an unsettled feeling started to build in the pit of her stomach.</p><p>“…America,” said Dwight after a moment. He must have seen the completely blank and almost disbelieving expression on her face and understood it, because he gave her a sympathetic smile. “I know. That’s not even the worst part, but we’re not going to tell you the worst part, I think. There’s no reason you need to know about the time displacement. It would only fuck you up.” He got a very serious and somber look on his face then, like something had only just occurred to him. “…God,” he whispered too himself.</p><p>Quentin watched him, looking similarly troubled, and then giving Adiris a gravely sad look, but he said nothing.</p><p>A little worried by that response, Adiris thought about what he’d said for a second, not having understood much of what came after the country name, but more and more concerned by the lack of any understanding of where they had come from that she had the more information she got. “…Gerbiš,” she said haltingly after a second, glancing up at them, and holding her hands out very close together with the word. She waited a second, then moved her hands far apart, and said, “Rūqiš.” Adiris glanced at them for confirmation they were understanding this, and they seemed to be. “…Âmerīka….rūqiš?” She repeated her <em>‘far away’ </em>gesture with the question.</p><p>Quentin opened his mouth and then stopped, and glanced to the side, like he was thinking hard how to answer that, all while looking even more troubled, but Dwight just looked kind of sad, and nodded at her. “Yeah. Very far. ‘Rukish’.” He mimicked her gesture, but brought his hands much, <em>much </em>further apart than hers had been.</p><p>Adiris made an affirmative sound in her throat, too lost in thought to really answer. <em>Okay. Okay… </em>This was bad, but, it couldn’t really get much worse than it had been, cosmically, so in a weird way maybe that was some kind of consolation.</p><p>“What exactly <em>is </em>the thing she gave you?” said Quentin quietly to Dwight after a few seconds of silence, “A robe? What’s it made out of?”</p><p>“Uh…linen?” guessed Dwight, glancing down at the garment, surprised, “Maybe? I-I don’t know a lot about cloth. It’s soft, though.”</p><p>“It looks like feathers,” said Quentin.</p><p>Dwight looked down at the outfit again, taken aback. “Does it? Yeah. I.” He held out his left arm, watching the billowy sleeve move with him, and how the tassels and gold inlays on the borders fell as he did. “I guess it does. I wonder if it’s supposed to.”</p><p>Refocusing on what she could do, Adiris gave the two a last glance, decided it wasn’t going to be worth it to try to figure out what they had started saying now, and then went over to the box of supplies. She picked it up and carried it to the center of the table, by the chairs, and set it back down and opened it, then glanced over her shoulder at Quentin and motioned for him to come over. He seemed less warry of getting close this time, and only hesitated for a second before coming cautiously over. When he got close, he paused to tie the cloth she’d given him around his neck so it would stay in place with his hands free, and then he joined her and looked into the box with her. Encouraged by this amount of willing cooperation, Adiris carefully passed him a little jar of water, taking the lid off to show him the contents and naming it, “Mû,” informatively because it felt right, even though she knew the word would be different for him, then passed him some clean cloths to use as bandages, and a little container of salve meant for cleaning cuts. She wasn’t really sure the best way to indicate what <em>that </em>one was, since he couldn’t just smell or taste it or recognize it on sight for sure like he could the water, so she just showed it to him, then put a little on her own finger and blindly applied it to the edge of the cut on the back of her head. “Piššatu,” she told him encouragingly, holding the small container out.</p><p>“O-oh,” said Quentin, taking it gingerly and putting it with the rest, then looking up at her like he was afraid to hope but was starting to do it just the same. “Thank—Daleelu.”</p><p>Surprised by the choice to say it her way, Adiris smiled at him, and immediately felt strange she’d done it. She had no idea why, but the feeling was impossible to shake, so she stopped smiling and stepped back from him a little, to give him room, but also to give herself room, confused. Quentin watched her go, looking worried, like he was afraid he’d done something wrong, and trying to reassure him, Adiris did her best to make her expression neutral again, and gestured at the supplies she’d left him.</p><p>“Uhm. …Dwight, I think this is for you—or—for me to use looking at your leg,” said Quentin slowly, glancing over at his friend, “Which is a good idea. It was starting to bleed again a minute ago. Come on over and sit down, and I’ll see what I can do.”</p><p>“Oh, uh. Sure,” said Dwight. He limped over to the chair closest to Quentin and glanced down at it and then double-took and got a funny expression on his face.</p><p>“What?” said Quentin in confusion, looking up from the supplies he was lining up on the edge of the table and seeing his expression.</p><p>“These are the biggest fucking chairs I’ve ever seen,” Dwight whispered like he was suddenly trying not to laugh, “Look at them. Trying to just <em>get on this</em> would be like climbing a bar stool. Holy <em>fuck. </em>Look at it! It’s like a <em>fake </em>chair. Holy shit, I—I always assumed she was just super tall, but I think maybe just everybody where she’s from was a giant. I feel like a kid trying to make it onto an adult chair. Did people used to be taller??”</p><p>Quentin tried to give him an <em>Are you serious right now, </em>moderately disapproving look, but the sides of his mouth twitched. “Just get on the chair, please.”</p><p>“I mean,” Dwight let out a long breath and shook his head, “I’ll try, but I can’t make you any promises. I might die scaling.”</p><p>Quentin rolled his eyes and Dwight climbed onto the chair with what seemed to be a little bit of trouble. Adiris had forgotten that how small they were might present a little bit of an issue doing that, but it didn’t seem too bad, just kind of awkward—like watching someone try to haul themselves up onto the sill of a window. The bad leg didn’t help, but he made it up without too much difficulty, and once up, he bent his injured leg so it was easy to see and reach, then rolled up his pant leg to get a clean look at the already mostly bled-through bandages there.</p><p>“Okay,” said Quentin reassuringly, moving to take off the bandages, “Some of the blood will have dried, so taking this off is going to stick a little, and it’s not gonna be fun.”</p><p>Dwight swallowed and put on a brave face. “Yep. Go ahead.”</p><p>From a few feet to the side, Adiris watched Quentin slowly unwind the bandages, but her mind wasn’t on that. <em>Why did you feel so strange? All you did was smile at him. It was not the first time. </em>And that was true—she had been trying to keep them calm by smiling quite a bit today, but almost as soon as she thought it, Adiris realized that in a way, she really hadn’t before. Because he had done something, and she hadn’t smiled on purpose this time—she had smiled on <em>impulse</em>. Thinking about it, Adiris realized kind of slowly that it had been a long, <em>long </em>time since she had done that. Even back in Babylon, as a priestess. She had smiled <em>for </em>people, for presentation, for doing her job right. When had been the last time that she had ever…? <em>I don’t know, </em>thought Adiris with a kind of horrible worried emotion at the realization, <em>I can’t remember. I can’t remember the last time I smiled on accident at all. I must have before sometime, right? It’s impossible I haven’t. It. It can’t have been that long ago, can it? No. Surely not. Surely I….</em></p><p>But she couldn’t find it. Not in a single one of the old memories she dug through. Maybe…maybe in the temple? When she had seen the statue of Ishtar, before her first day as a priestess—she thought she had then at least once. She remembered how excited and relieved and welcomed she had felt, like it was holding its arms out to embrace her. <em>I must have smiled then. I’m sure I did. </em>And before that…? <em>…I…It can’t have been that long before…I’m just not…not remembering all the…the right…</em></p><p>Oh, what did it matter anyway? Even if she didn’t do that much, it had been no reason to panic, had it? Why had it repulsed her to do it? Why had she immediately wanted to pull away?</p><p>She didn’t know. She couldn’t figure it out, no matter how much she dug at it in her head. She was sure she had been afraid something terrible would happen as soon as she’d done it, but for the life of her, she had no idea what, or why. Just that it had scared her. And she <em>still </em>felt kind of shaken by it, even having dissected the moment to death in her head and found no reason at all to feel that way.</p><p><em>What do you think will happen? </em>she chastised herself, watching Dwight suck in a breath and grimace as Quentin wiped blood off his calf and started to clean the wound. Quentin shifted to take the salve from the table, and for a second, Adiris could see the wound in Dwight’s leg clearly—a deep puncture, red and still bleeding and painful looking, and she was suddenly thinking about the prongs on her incense burner, and not just this wound, but many, many others. Thinking about the little picture Dwight had drawn of himself being beaten by her, and the way his scream had sounded when she had downed him in the little temple only a few hours ago and dragged him back towards her. And she was suddenly seeing <em>so </em>much more then—seeing everyone she had ever hunted here, and wondering for the first time with horror if they were all like these two, and realizing right on the heels of the question that they <em>must </em>be—they were <em>all </em>going to be, every single one of them, no matter how much she hoped the opposite. They were all going to be foreigners from somewhere so far away she did not even know the name of their kingdom, all lost, and all alone, and confused, and just trying to survive and to comfort each other through the torture they had been enduring. And gods, it overwhelmed her so completely, thinking of it that way. Remembering things she had done to people, and thinking of it with the word ‘torture’ still echoing in her head. There were<em> so many things </em>she had done to these people. And she couldn’t stop it—she couldn’t take it back. She wanted desperately to go back in time and re-do all of this—tried to, like she had ever since she was a little girl, because she had always hoped somewhere deep down maybe it might work, since no one really understood how time worked at all—picked a memory from the start of all this and shut her eyes and tried to shift her consciousness back to that other version of her body, from what was maybe years ago now. Tried so hard to do it—to remember the sights and smells and sounds and feel of the air and to wake up there and have the option to choose differently and let things end more right, but when she opened her eyes again, nothing had changed. She was still standing alone in the shadows in the cool, dim archives, a few steps away from two wounded foreigners who were terrified of her and always would be, and it was too late to change any of it. Like she had known it would be. And she was seeing more too, with the flickering images of her own violence in her head—seeing her own people. Belessunu, Laliya, Ibbi-Adad, Iltani, familiar faces, ones she had known before they had been overcome with rot and growth and deformity like her own. And she watched months, years maybe of them in her head, suffering out there every day in the yard, and smiling about it, trying to cheer each other up. Through the torture they were enduring. The rituals, which had seemed so normal to her, and simple, and just. Because they had been so little to pay against the promise of life, hadn’t they? But she was watching Humusi, who had been brave and volunteered to go first the week they arrived, and been so scared, and so brave, stepping out into the middle of that fire and being consumed by it. The awful way she had screamed. How relieved Adiris had been when she had reappeared in their midst minutes later, unharmed—assuring them it was fine, that she barely even remembered the pain.</p><p><em>Toyed with. </em>Adiris wondered if it had even been true that she could barely remember, and the Uttuku had made her forget, or if she had been lying because she was still trying to be brave. She wondered if they were <em>all </em>lying. To her, to themselves, to each other. They were always suffering. Falling to the ground retching, or mutilating themselves in the rituals they had been taught. And that had seemed okay. Why had it seemed so okay; why was it so different now, just because Nergal, or whatever it was had lied? It shouldn’t have changed anything. Maybe it hadn’t. Maybe all that had changed was she had realized how utterly untrustworthy her own judgement was. But Gods. The worship and pain couldn’t be much of a life to the people who hadn’t sought priesthood the way she had, could it? No matter how desperate they were for life. And even if they were truly happy somehow, the way she had been, that was a lie. Because she had <em>no </em>idea what this thing they were serving was going to do to them, or what might cause it to change its mind. She didn’t even know for sure anymore what it was. What it was going to do with all that power they had been giving it with their suffering, or who else it might hurt, what awful torment it might turn on them as soon as they were no longer useful the way they were now. And she was responsible for that too—for all of it—she had <em>led</em> them. She had led her people to <em>this.</em></p><p><em>I am <strong>so </strong>sorry, </em>thought Adiris, backing up a step, and then another two, the motion unconscious and unsteady, her mind somewhere else. Just trying to back away from all of it—from the people in the room, the people waiting above the temple, the reality coming her way quickly and relentlessly and inescapably. <em>No—I—I didn’t know—I didn’t mean to—it was Nergal; I trusted him.</em></p><p>But that had been her job, hadn’t it? To know who to trust. So, it was her fault. She had been their spiritual leader, and her core responsibility had been to show them who to follow and where to tread, and she had failed them completely, and utterly, and to such an impossibly horrible extent that it was almost incomprehensible in its overwhelmingly decimating completeness. She <em>could not </em>have done them worse. The unforgiving, rough stone of the archive wall met her back, but she barely even registered she’d hit it.</p><p>“Whoa.”</p><p>“Is she—are you okay?”</p><p>It took Adiris a second to realize they had spoken to her. When the sound connected a few seconds late, she got herself to look towards them, and found both young men staring at her.</p><p>“…Minūm?” asked Adiris vacantly, unsure what they had said or wanted, and still partially in her own head.</p><p>“Are you okay?” asked Dwight. “You, uh…” He pointed to her and then intentionally winced and grimaced performatively like he was pretending he’d been hurt, and gave her a questioning look.</p><p>
  <em>‘Am I hurt’.</em>
</p><p>No. No, she wasn’t. Well, she was, but not more than she always was. Or—no—that was wrong too—she <em>was </em>hurt more than normal. It just wasn’t what was wrong. Adiris remembered to answer finally then, and shook her head, still barely paying any real attention. She hoped they would go back to fixing the leader’s leg and turn away again.</p><p>“She doesn’t <em>seem </em>okay.” Adiris vaguely registered the medic talking again, but it wasn’t to her, so she didn’t really tune in. She kept her gaze on nothing and tried to stop feeling too, letting the sounds drift by.</p><p>“Yeah.”</p><p>“… …Dwight?”</p><p>“Yeah?”</p><p>“…What do you think’s gonna happen? I-I don’t even really mean here, right now, or—or next. I mean. …If she lets us go—if she doesn’t change her mind again. What happens? Will… I mean, do you think that…next time we’re in a trial, and we see her coming, it’ll. …Nothing’ll be different? She’ll just…kill us? Again? Like before? Do you…think she’ll even look at us different?”</p><p>Whatever he was saying, the medic sounded said in a hard way—the way people spoke when they were trying hard <em>not </em>to sound in pain or emotional about something. And she was afraid he would be talking about her, so she didn’t look to see if he was glancing at her, because she didn’t want to know.</p><p>“…I dunno, Quentin,” answered the leader quietly, “I hadn’t thought about it. … I don’t know what to expect from her.”</p><p>“…I wish this hadn’t happened.” She heard the medic take a breath and slowly let it out. “…It’s gonna suck. Getting killed by someone you kinda know. I think it’ll be worse.”</p><p>The medic’s tone had been very different this time—more casual, she had thought, so she had looked then, because it had started to become harder not to, but he did not look better when she saw his face. There was regret in his expression, and depression, and so much more sadness than she had expected. The leader was watching him carefully, looking sorry and like he understood, maybe even felt somewhat the same, but also like he knew he had no idea how to fix it.</p><p>“…Yeah,” offered the leader very quietly after a second, and he looked away at the wall.</p><p>For a second it was silent, and then the medic cleared his throat and glanced guiltily up at the friend whose leg he was wrapping in one of the white cloths. “Sorry. I know saying that doesn’t help.”</p><p>“It’s okay,” said the leader, glancing back and smiling at him, “I’m not alright about this all either—I just haven’t really started thinking about it yet.”</p><p>“Well, your leg should feel a lot better at least.” The medic tied off the bandage and gave the leader an encouraging smile. “Is whatever’s in the salve helping?”</p><p>“Oh yeah—a lot. It actually kind of made the cut go numb, but I am <em>not </em>complaining,” said the leader, smiling a little back. The medic straightened up then and wiped off his hands, and the leader pulled his clothing back down over the bandaged cut again, and then they both glanced over at Adiris. Waiting for her to make her next move. To tell them what to do, or to come over and force them to go somewhere again, or to try to trap them in here, or decide to attack them, or any of the myriad of things she might choose.</p><p>Slowly, moving almost automatically, Adiris walked back to the table. Both of them tensed a little bit unconsciously as she got close, and she tried to ignore that, and focus, and she held out her palm and made a drawing motion against it to show the leader what she wanted, then held out her hand for the book.</p><p>Dwight gave her a nod and fished it out of a pocket and handed it over, and Adiris moved between them by the table so they would both be able to see, and then set the book against it and flipped it open to find a blank spot to write in, and the book flipped open to the spread Dwight had done, and she was looking dead-center at the little drawing Dwight had made of himself cowering and trying to shield his face with his arms and crying while she hit him with the incense burner, and she froze with her finger against the page and just looked at it. Couldn’t stop looking at it. At the little expression on the simple drawing of a human face, and the exaggerated tears, and the way he had drawn her. Not angry, not vengeful, or righteous, or aggressive, or cruel, but aloof. Cold, and withdrawn, and unfeeling. Mouth a straight line, no real expression on the face at all except perhaps intent and focus. And somehow that was so much worse, and she knew it was true. It was all true; she knew that she looked like that. That she had looked like that, hunting them. Like it was all beneath her notice. Or they were things that didn’t matter. Inhuman. And it was one more thing than she could take and keep going, and something that had already splintered irreparably inside her finally snapped, and she had already been crying for at least three seconds before she realized she was doing it at all, because she had been so lost in the horror of too many things together to register anything for real except the faces in the little picture she couldn’t look away from.</p><p>They had both said something, she thought, but she hadn’t heard it at all. She couldn’t hear anything. The pillar she had been using to support everything she was had shattered into nothing but a pile of rubble and dust inside her now, and she could still hear pieces falling, and it broke her, and she started to cry harder and couldn’t stop. Her shoulders began to shake from the intensity of her weeping, and she sunk to the ground at the base of the table and folded in on herself, arms over her knees, head buried against her arms, and she shook and cried and listened to the sound of everything she had believed in and hoped in and been break and fall inside her head like an earthquake levelling a city, just waiting to see if she would even be alive when it was over, or if something crumbling inside her would hit her and take her down with it, and almost hoping that was a thing that could be really possible, and that something would, and end it all.</p><p>Something set tentatively down on her arm.</p><p>She had lost time in the middle of that overwhelming despair, and Adiris was a little disoriented and disconnected, but she looked up automatically in surprise, because something in front of her had touched her and there shouldn’t have been anything in front of her at all, and through puffy, swollen eyes, she was met with the sight of Dwight about half foot in front of her, hand extended and set against her arm, and Quentin with him.</p><p>“Hey,” said Dwight soothingly, brow furrowed with worry.</p><p>They had come and crawled under the table to be able to reach her, she was realizing—that would have been the only way to really get to her at all, the way she’d folded up against the edge of it, and they were both crouched there watching her worriedly and with a considerable amount of concern.</p><p>Her eyes welled up at the sight of that because it hurt so much, and then the tears spilled over and ran down her cheeks as her shoulders started to pitch again with silent, choked sobs.</p><p>“No, no, no,” said Dwight reassuringly, trying to stop her from crying, “It’s okay. You’re okay. We’re okay.”</p><p>Whatever he’d said to her, Quentin nodded sincerely, face pale and worried.</p><p>“Adrakanni,” whispered Adiris, barely making it through the word before losing her voice to tears again.</p><p>“Uhm,” said Dwight worriedly, glancing from her to Quentin and back and totally lost, she realized hopelessly. She couldn’t even tell him she was sorry. He wouldn’t understand.</p><p>Quentin’s brows furrowed with worry, and then his expression changed completely. “I know what that means!” He looked from her to Dwight and started to talk fast, voice some weird mixture of concerned and excited. “She said that to me—when—when she gave me this—” He pointed to the cloth around his neck. “I think she said she’s sorry!”</p><p>Dwight stared at him in surprise, then turned back to Adiris. “Ad-Ad—”</p><p>“—rakahnih?” said Quentin with him, remembering it better.</p><p>“Adrakahnih?” asked Dwight again, meeting her gaze and giving her a very, very sorry look.</p><p>Stunned they had understood after all, Adiris nodded and teared up again, still overwhelmed and struggling to really stop weeping long enough to be able to do anything.</p><p>“Is that why she’s crying?” Dwight asked Quentin like he was stunned, then turning back to Adiris, “Is that why you’re upset?—You feel bad about— …Shit. Shit, I don’t know how to ask her,” he finished, swinging back to Quentin.</p><p>Quentin glanced at him, then Adiris, then tentatively pointed at her. “Adrakahnih.” He hesitated, then made a stabbing motion, then pointed to himself and Dwight and gave her a questioning look.</p><p>Adiris broke down completely into sobs again and shut her eyes, trying to nod before curling up against her knees again.</p><p>“—Fuck—I-I didn’t—”</p><p>“—I don’t think it was you. I think she’s just…heartbroken.”</p><p>The medic had sounded confused and worried, but the leader had just sounded quiet and sad. She didn’t know what either of those responses meant, but it hardly mattered. Whatever they said, she probably couldn’t have understood them anyway. And whatever she could have told them in response wouldn’t have been enough.</p><p>“You mean. …You think she believes us?” asked the medic in a shaky tone she wouldn’t have known how to place.</p><p>“She must, right?” answered the leader in the same voice he had spoken in before, quiet and sad, “Why else would she apologize? She can’t be sorry if she believes we’re… …<em>God. </em>I can’t imagine, though.” His voice had become almost inaudible now. “…How it would feel. To have…”</p><p>There was a pause, and then Adiris felt a hesitant hand on her shoulder. She made herself look up to see what they wanted, even though all she wanted to do was curl up and die, and the medic was looking back at her with an expression like he was caught between the very strong urge to do something and the very strong fear it would be the wrong thing to do. He made a move like he would come a little closer, and then faltered, but he kept his hand where it was.</p><p>“…I-I don’t. Know how to say, ‘I forgive you’,” he told her worriedly, still quiet, “I. …I thought a long time ago that someone died horribly because of me, because I had been wrong. I still remember how that felt: like it couldn’t ever be fixed. It’s not your fault. It used you. We’re not mad—we. I just. I was afraid you would never even give us a chance, and we’d have to die forever, just like before, but knowing why now. And liking you a little bit, and not being able to change how much you hated us for something we didn’t do.”</p><p>The young man was talking to her like he was worried about her, but Adiris had no idea what any of the words meant. And somehow that scared her more than silence would have, because she wanted to guess at meanings, and he sounded like he was being kind, but she couldn’t guess. She couldn’t, not anymore, because she would be wrong—wrong like she was always wrong, and she couldn’t <em>be </em>wrong again. She couldn’t take another beating. And thinking that, she trembled a little under his hand, body tugging at her and trying to drag more tears out of her, and the boy saw it and removed his hand immediately, misreading it as fear maybe, she thought, and gave her a very distressed look.</p><p>“I’m sorry. I—Adrakahnih—I don’t know how to say anything to you. Please don’t give up,” he said entreatingly.</p><p><em>Sorry? Why—why would <span class="u">you</span> be sorry? I… </em>But maybe he was talking about her. She didn’t know. So overwhelmed, Adiris shut her eyes again and bowed her head, shoulders beginning to shake again, and then she felt the medic’s hand set down on her shoulder again and forced herself to look back up at the blurry shape of him that was hard to make out through the tears in her eyes.</p><p>“It’s <em>okay</em>,” said Quentin like the words she didn’t know were meant to comfort her and reassure her, “It’s okay. We forgive you.”</p><p>With the words, he very hesitantly shifted forward on his knees and put his arms around her, shutting his eyes and bowing his head, the way a dog might hug you with its forehead pressed flat against your leg if it trusted you so much it was not afraid to show you that love and trust by leaving itself completely vulnerable, and Adiris went rigid against the unexpected gesture, stunned.</p><p>She didn’t even feel anything. Nothing at all, past the surprise, and she turned her head and looked at Dwight for answers, and he was watching her with the same expression he had watched her with a lot tonight, ever since she had woken up chained to a gate—like he was sorry. They met eyes, and Dwight gave her a sad smile, and said, “He’s right. It’s okay. You didn’t do this to us—the Entity did it to us all. I forgive you too.”</p><p>He paused a moment, somewhere far away and a little sad in his head, then moved forward and did the same thing Quentin had, glancing up at her before he did, then putting an arm around her and the other around her and Quentin both, then shutting his eyes and bowing his head against her.</p><p>Adiris stayed completely still, staring at nothing now, then down at the backs of their heads. The despair was gone, or, pushed out momentarily, but she still couldn’t feel anything at all in its place except shock. It didn’t make sense. <em>Why </em>would they do this? Why? They’d understood what she’d done. They.</p><p>…<em>You accepted me? </em>thought Adiris hopelessly, tension going out of her frame but staying still, watching the two young men who for some unfathomable reason had chosen to respond to a history of death and abuse and violence that had been intended for someone else, by accepting her remorse and putting themselves entirely at her mercy, again. Of their own free will this time. Just to show her they were willing to do it.</p><p>She felt then.</p><p>It should have been overwhelming, because the idea alone of being forgiven for this was, but it wasn’t. It was a soft feeling, and a glad one, but it was strong too—just a deep feeling, like the glow of a forge’s furnace of coals, steady and lasting but nearly hidden, instead of a raging brushfire like her despair had been—all changeable and overpowering and impossible to contain. And somehow, the soft feeling came in and settled and pushed the despair out, even though she had been drowning in it moments ago, and she felt almost okay.</p><p>Carefully, Adiris set a hand on the back of both their heads, and gently moved them, trying to get them to look up at her, and they did—Dwight first, then Quentin—and she gave them a watery smile and sniffed and cleared her throat, trying to swallow the remnants of weeping.</p><p>“Tahank ya’u,” managed Adiris haltingly.</p><p>They looked <em>so </em>excited by that—by this one little success, by the use of a single word in their language.</p><p>“You’re welcome,” said Dwight the same moment Quentin said, “Welcome.”</p><p>“Ww…elkum?” she asked shakily, almost hopeful again and wanting to understand.</p><p>“Uhh,” said Dwight, glancing at Quentin, “Like this? –Quentin, thank me.”</p><p>“Thank you,” said Quentin.</p><p>“Welcome,” said Dwight, giving him a nod and a smile.</p><p>…<em>Ahh, I—I think I see that. ‘Accept happily’. </em>“Ḫadîš imḫur,” informed Adiris cautiously.</p><p>“Hhch—” “Hchh-ah-desh Eem-hch—” “eem-hch—ooo-oor?” tried Quentin and Dwight together very badly, but it made her very happy to see them try, and it had been good enough anyone would have known what they were <em>trying </em>to say—just also beyond a shadow of a doubt that they were foreigners.</p><p>Adiris made an affirmative “Mmm” sound in her throat and nodded at them.</p><p>“Oof, that ‘Hch’ is like the sound in ‘loch’,” said Dwight in friendly commisery to Quentin, “I really hope it’s not a common sound, because my throat’s really bad at making it and I’m gonna sound <em>ridiculous </em>every time.”</p><p>“It—it’s kinda like a sound in German,” said Quentin thoughtfully, “I took that in highschool.”</p><p>“<em>Please </em>help me then,” said Dwight.</p><p>Quentin grinned at him, then Adiris. “So. You feeling okay now?” He paused and pointed to her, then smiled, then gave her a questioning look.</p><p>Adiris gave a nod. She patted both young men on the back once and then let go and straightened up. The other two took a second to awkwardly crawl out from under the table, then brushed themselves off and came over to join her. <em>Some kind of people you must be, </em>thought Adiris with an unusual amount of affection for people she had really only just met, watching them try to get old dust off their knees, <em>You either come from a very forgiving place, or have somehow just chosen even here to be unusually kind.</em></p><p>”So, uh, do you want to—pick up where you left off?” asked Dwight, gesturing to the book on the table and giving her a questioning glance, “Whatever you were going to show us?”</p><p>Adiris felt pretty sure she understood the gist of the question, and nodded, then moved to the book. It was still open on the same awful spread, and Adiris glanced down at the picture for a long couple of seconds, feeling the echo of the devastating remorse from before, but this time she glanced over and Dwight was still giving her a friendly kind of smile, waiting to see what she had wanted to say, and encouraged, Adiris flipped away from all the pictures from before and opened to a blank spread. This was very handy to have, and she was glad Dwight had possessed it—doing this on tablets would have taken <em>much </em>longer—and been much more difficult to destroy evidence of later if needed…</p><p>Working internally through where exactly to start, Adiris reached for the pen, and Quentin set his hand down on hers quickly to stop her, and she glanced at him in surprise.</p><p>“Wait—what’s your name?” said Quentin.</p><p>“Oh god, you’re right,” said Dwight in great distress, “We never even <em>asked </em>her.”</p><p>Adiris looked from one to the other, absolutely no idea what had suddenly gone wrong and immediately feeling the composure she’d had start to ebb back out. <em>Did I do something wrong? </em>She watched them with big worried eyes, waiting to see.</p><p>“Uh—‘Quentin,’” said Dwight, glancing at her and pointing to Quentin with the word, “’Dwight,’” he continued, gesturing to himself. Then he pointed to Adiris and gave her a glance that pretty clearly said, ‘<em>You?’</em></p><p>She stared at him. <em>Oh. Oh, that was all. You only. Wanted to know my name, first. Because I hadn’t told you. You weren’t upset, you just. Were upset you didn’t. Didn’t know it. You. </em>It was such a simple, human thing to have stopped to do, and it overwhelmed her. In the middle of all this, to be asked to pause to tell them her name. They didn’t <em>need </em>it—they called her ‘Plague’ and had seen her answer to it. Which meant they could only be asking because they wanted to know. Just wanted to.</p><p>For a few seconds, she just stayed still, lost in that and overwhelmed in thinking and feeling too many things—thinking about everything Nergal had ever said to her or done or had her do. Thinking about the last time someone had asked her her name for any reason other than that they wanted something. She couldn’t remember it. She wasn’t sure if it had ever happened, though it must have, right? It must have, at least when she was a child. It must have happened more than once—she had just forgotten. But in all the memories she searched for, she had only ever <em>told it </em>to people before. And she was thinking again about the way the leader had sawed through his own thumb for a moment of compassion for another that was almost nothing in the grand scheme of life here, and the way the medic had kept trying to heal her after she had tried twice to kill him, and she felt her eyes well up, and then she slowly balled her fists until the gold rings bit into her palms and began to scream in rage.</p><p>It was <em>too </em>unacceptable! She couldn’t STAND it! Couldn’t bear it—it made her furious, and she hated it, and she had a violent, overpowering urge to reach out and crush it—to start tearing things apart and smashing tablets and breaking chairs against the wall in place of the violence she was searching for on her way to do it! She was unbelievably, consumingly, utterly <em>enraged</em>, to the core of her soul!</p><p>Both of the foreigners watched that in absolute confused and some kind of terrified horror, and backed away from her, looking for what they’d done wrong, and she thought about reassuring them, but she was so furious she wasn’t sure how to.</p><p>She had started to scream with the same breath she was still on, and she didn’t know how she was still going, how she hadn’t had to breathe again yet. Adiris had never <em>heard </em>herself this furious—she had never heard <em>anyone </em>this furious! Not even in her head or in her dreams! But there was so much power in her voice she almost believed she could break something with it, and she was so consumed by her fury she tried to—she lashed her arms out to her sides, wanting to lay waste to everything around her with the hatred and righteous anger she felt, and to her complete shock, she did.</p><p>The far left wall buckled like it had been struck by a bolt of lightning, and cubbies collapsed and tablets slid to the ground on top of each other, some cracking on impact. On her right, the same thing happened to one of the support pillars holding up the archway, and it half-caved in, sending stones and dust and debris scattering everywhere, and in front of her, the table was flung backwards against the wall, and the chairs overturned, all in the same one-second burst of something. The foreigners flinched and threw their arms up over their heads at the violent motion and the sudden sounds of things cracking and falling, and one of them cried out, but whatever she’d done didn’t even touch them, and she froze as soon as she realized what she’d tried to do had actually worked, and they all three stayed there stunned as bits of stone finished falling and dust settled around them.</p><p>As silence reclaimed the room, slowly, Adiris raised her hands and gaped at them. <em>I can’t believe it. I did <span class="u">magic</span>—I. </em>Her eyes widened and she felt her heart skip a beat, and she stared down at the rings she had taken from a statue a long, long time ago now, because she had felt called to that first day at the temple. Thinking about the hands they had belonged to before hers. <em>…<span class="u">Were</span> you listening? </em>she thought with what was almost hope. Ishtar was the only god who had fought Erṣetu itself, not once, but twice. Been killed in it and humiliated, and brought back and escaped in the end. Maybe. She—she was too terrified of believing in something again to really want to do it in any kind of personal way, but—but just the same. She. <em>Goddess of war and power and the storm, if it was you, thank you. I am listening.</em></p><p>“Holy <em>shit,</em>” said Dwight, lowering his arms and gaping at Adiris, “How did you <em>do </em>that?”</p><p>“<em>Why </em>did you do that?” asked Quentin, who unlike Dwight who mostly just looked stunned, still looked decently scared again, “Was—should we not have asked?”</p><p>Adiris turned to them and let out a breath, and lowered her arms. The shock of destroying a wall with nothing but anger and the force of her will had depleted some of the overpowering rage she’d been running on, and she felt a little more like herself now.</p><p>“Tašallimākunūti,” promised Adiris reassuringly, trying to convey “<em>You’re okay,” </em>by tone of voice and expression, holding her hands up in a gesture of peace.</p><p>“Uh... Okay,” said Quentin a little less nervously, but still on edge, “Uh. What <em>was </em>all that?” He glanced around and gestured to the massive damage she’d inflicted on the room.</p><p>A little embarrassed but too excited to be <em>really </em>feeling that, Adiris held up her hand in a ‘<em>Wait a moment’ </em>gesture, crossed to the table, and picked it and the scattered chairs back up, then reclaimed the little book and pen, which had also gone flying.</p><p>“…Yeah,” said Dwight after a moment of watching her do this, moving into her line of sight to try to get her to communicate with him again, “How did you <em>do </em>that?” He pointed to the damage to the room and gave her a very questioning looking.</p><p>Adiris cleared her throat and straightened up, finished setting the last chair back, and then turned to them. “Ana ša attunu… ana yâti dummuqûtum-ma,” she tried slowly, feeling a little nervous doing this for the first time, really, because she didn’t actually exactly <em>know </em>the answer to the question, which for some reason made her much less sure they would believe her. As she spoke, she gestured to them, and then faltered on ‘<em>dummuqûtum’ </em>with no idea how to visually indicate being treated with kindness. “Ah—Attunu…” <em>You…you were kind, and. I… </em>In desperation, she just pointed to them and then closed her hand into a fist and placed it over her heart, like she was clutching something precious.</p><p>“Ašabbus,” she added after a moment, and pointed to herself and quickly made an intentionally very angry expression to accompany the word, then regained her neutral expression.  “Ah—Ana ša!” she hurried to add, seeing the confusion on their faces. <em>Because…because. Uh—c-come on. </em>“Attunu… damqiš.” She gestured to them and then touched the bandage on her head, and then mimicked a hugging gesture and motioned to herself. “Attunu ana yâti dummuqûtum,” she echoed herself, almost smiling, thinking about that, “u…Nergal. …Ana kunūti uššaš.” She indicated vaguely upwards for ‘Nergal’ and then pointed to them again and made a very violent attacking motion with the hand holding her incense burner, and then a throat-slitting motion for emphasis, since ‘<em>Torture’</em> wasn’t the most easy word to translate directly, and that was pretty close.</p><p>Quentin and Dwight glanced at each other, then back at her. “…Oh,” said Dwight, very surprised. “Uh. Thank you. I think. Daleelu.”</p><p>Greatly relieved, Adiris gave a kind of <em>‘Sure’ </em>gesture, trying desperately to shrug the whole thing off and move on now, because she was kind of embarrassed overall and also pretty worried they were going to ask her more about how she’s wrecked the room, and she did not know how she had done it either.</p><p>“Did she say she got pissed because we’re nice and the Entity kills us?” muttered Quentin to Dwight under his breath like a question.</p><p>“I uh, I think so,” answered Dwight in the same tone.</p><p>“Holy shit,” whispered Quentin. And then, thoughtfully after a second, “I wish <em>I </em>could do that when <strong><em>I</em></strong> get mad about that kind of thing.”</p><p>“Uh…yeah, mood,” agreed Dwight, still looking like he was living in an internal state of surrealness, moving to join Adiris at the table again, Quentin just behind him. “So uh,” he asked Adiris, “Have you <em>always </em>been able to do that?”</p><p>She wasn’t sure what he was asking, but he was pointing to the damaged room again, and no matter what the question was, she probably didn’t know how to answer it, so Adiris gave him a nervous shrug.</p><p>“…Okay,” said Dwight to himself.</p><p>“Uh—I don’t really want to prompt another storm, but you never did tell us your name,” said Quentin hesitantly. When she glanced at him, he pointed a little nervously to himself and then Dwight, saying, “Quentin, Dwight,” and then pointing to her and ending with a questioning look.</p><p><em>Oh. Oh—right. </em>She tried to give him a reassuring look, because she kind of got at this point why he was a little worried anything he said or did to her might provoke wildly unprecedented action, and she felt kind of bad about that. She made an affirmative sound and gave him a nod, then pointed to herself, and said, “Adiris.”</p><p>“<em>Ahdeerees</em>,” echoed Dwight at her side thoughtfully, sounding it out. He seemed to like it, which made her feel suddenly immensely and unexpectedly happy to a stupid extent she couldn’t quite understand, but it was a very welcome feeling.</p><p>“Okay, Adiris,” said Quentin, looking relieved and happy about it too, “Thank you.—Daleelu. Sorry for not asking sooner.” He gave a nod then, and gestured to the book that was still waiting, and Adiris had no idea at all what he might have been saying he was sorry for <em>or </em>really what he was thanking her for—maybe not screaming and destroying things again though, come to think of it—but either way, he seemed okay, and taking his general demeanor as her cue over his words, Adiris gave a nod back and picked up the pen and began to draw.</p><p>This was going to be a little complicated, and there was a lot to cover, and the language barrier was a huge pain, but she at least had come up with a decent idea of where to start. It took a minute, but once her drawing felt good enough, Adiris moved back and gestured for them to look at the completed drawing. It was a picture of Nergal in the form he always appeared to her. Beneath it, she had drawn two other images, each with a smaller version of Nergal in two alternate settings: hovering on a throne set in the sky above the earth, with his talons encircling the whole planet, and then a setting with a human standing in a desert, and black smoke seeping up through a crack in the ground and encircling him, and talons creeping up to close around him and drag him down.</p><p>“Ayyam?” she asked, pointing between the two images.</p><p>“…Okay. I think this is her asking what the Entity is,” said Quentin, surprised and happy about getting it, she was pretty sure, “Right?”</p><p>“Yeah, I think so too,” said Dwight, focused intently on the drawing, “…Okay, so, she gave us two choices, right? Big powerful space thing, or nasty hiding monster.”</p><p>“I think it’s more specific than that,” said Quentin, gesturing to the drawing, “Look. In the first one, it’s on a throne. That’s gotta be intentional. And the other one is coming up from the earth all sneaky and creepy, like a monster, or a demon. I’m…not sure which one the second is supposed to be, but. I think—with the throne—and since she told us the Entity was a God she worshiped—I think that’s gotta be ‘God,’ right?”</p><p>“Yeah, no,” said Dwight, a little surprised, taking closer note of her first drawing, “You’re definitely right.”</p><p>“I guess it would actually be pretty easy to double-check,” said Quentin as if something had just occurred to him, “—Hang on a sec.”</p><p>He took the pen Adiris had set down and started to draw beside her drawing, and she leaned in curiously, watching as first a temple with worshipers bowing down were added by the Nergal she’d drawn on a throne, and then a massive dark shape with horns and huge claws and fangs towering over a person like an evil shadow come to life was added beside her picture of the Utukku in the desert.</p><p>“Is that what these are?” asked Quentin once he was done, pointing between her pictures and his, “A God,” he pointed to the Nergal on the throne, “and a Demon?” he indicated the Utukku seeping up to claim a victim. “Uh…a ’Gallu’?”</p><p>Adiris glanced over at him at ‘Gallu’ and then back at his drawings. She made a noncommittal <em>kind of </em>sound in her throat. “Ilum.” <em>God. </em>She pointed to the drawing of the worshipers by the throne he’d added and gave a nod. “Annam. Šū ‘Ilum’.” She pointed to the other drawing and teetered a hand in <em>kind of </em>gesture. “Šū…” <em>That, </em>she thought, pointing to what he’d drawn and hesitating, “<em>Pīqat</em> Gallû?” She tried, working really hard to convey <em>maybe</em> in her tone of voice with ‘pīqat,’ and then<em> for sure </em>with ‘lū’ when she spoke again. “<em>Lū</em> Utukku.” <em>Yeah, </em>she thought, considering again,<em> I really don’t <span class="u">think</span> it’s a Gallu. </em>She hesitated again, then tapped his drawing and hers and gave him a nod, because yes, that looked like an Utukku, so she thought he got the concept and was just missing the word. “Šū, annam. U ul ‘Gallu’,” she tried to explain, shaking her head, <em>It’s that thing, yes, but it’s not a Gallu. Uh…It’s more…</em> “Gallu…” She said again slowly, flipping back to the drawing he’d done of the man who’d tried to kill him, and then tapping it. “Gallu.” Flipping back to her drawing and his beside it of the shadowy thing in the desert, she said, “Ul Gallu,” and shook her head, “<em><span class="u">Utukku</span></em>.”</p><p>“Utukku?” echoed Quentin, and then he gave a nod, “Okay. I guess ‘Gallu’ is more like ghost or something.”</p><p>Dwight gave a thoughtful nod. “That kind of tracks with what I remember <em>of </em>Gallus.”</p><p>“Okay, so, God. Demon,” said Quentin, pointing from one to the other, “Entity’s a demon for sure, right?”</p><p>“Oh yeah,” agreed Dwight automatically.</p><p>Quentin turned to Adiris and pointed at the drawing of the Utukku in the desert, and said, “Utukku,” very definitively.</p><p>“Tīde?” asked Adiris in a very clearly <em>are you <span class="u">sure</span>? </em>tone of voice.</p><p>Quentin started to answer, and them his expression changed a little, like something very troubling had dawned on him, and he paled and glanced over at Dwight. “We…We <em>are </em>pretty sure it’s some kind of demon, right? Or monster? Not a…” He looked back at the drawing of the throne, suddenly overwhelmed, and swallowed.</p><p>“…Yeah,” said Dwight, sounding fairly sure. Whatever he’d said, he seemed to reconsider almost instantly too though, and his expression changed as well. “Uh. Actually. Uh. Do we know what the…difference is?” He finally asked Quentin with some decent amount of worry. “If it’s some kind of ‘god,’ like small g god, like a uh, I don’t know—all I ever learned were Greek gods—but like if Hades were real or something. If those were a thing, and it’s a god that’s evil, what’s the difference between that and a demon?”</p><p>“Uh,” said Quentin with a considerable amount of distress, “I have no idea. Power level?”</p><p>“…The Entity <em>is </em>pretty powerful. But. That can’t be the only differentiation, right?” said Dwight with matching discomfort and worry.</p><p>“Okay. Okay, but, gods don’t do this shit—not in any religion <em>I’ve </em>ever heard of,” tried Quentin.</p><p>“True, I. Thiiiink, anyway…” said Dwight slowly, “…Okay, so. Pros and cons. In the God behavior side, it <em>does </em>definitely like sacrifices, and want them from us.”</p><p>“Okay,” said Quentin with distress.</p><p>“But on the <em>not </em>God behavior side, I’m pretty sure Gods are always the god <em>of </em>something—uhh, be it <em>everything</em> in a monotheistic religion, or life, or trees, or war, or whatever in polytheistic ones,” said Dwight, “A-and as far as <em>I </em>can tell, the big nasty sure as shit isn’t watching over some kind of domain.”</p><p>“That’s a really good point,” said Quentin quickly with great relief, “Demons and all kinds of things take sacrifices, but Gods for <em>sure </em>have some kind of domain things going on. So, it’s <em>gotta </em>be a demon, right? Or some kind of primordial monster thing.”</p><p>“…I <em>think </em>so,” said Dwight with medium-surety.</p><p>“We <em>think </em>so,” said Quentin to Adiris, selecting the ‘Demon’ option in the book again with a look on his face like a man making a high-stakes wager he had enough faith in to make the bet, but was still praying desperately not to lose on.</p><p><em>…Okay, well. It is what I think too, </em>thought Adiris to herself, sifting through information again to double-check, <em>If he really were Nergal, why would he never have appeared in the forms he is usually depicted in? Not even once? We <span class="u">must</span> be in Er</em><em>ṣ</em><em>etu somewhere, for everything to be so horrible and surreal and death treated like such a game, there can be no doubt about that, but there are many things besides the gods who live in the underworld. The worst demons who nearly destroyed the earth once still do, even after their defeat by the gods; they are not dead. I think the foreigners must be right, though. The thing I have served <span class="u">must</span> be a demon, right? If he truly <span class="u">were</span> Nergal, why has he <span class="u">never</span> mentioned Ereshkigal to me? And the behavior they say he’s show is not very god-like at all. So…I think that is almost certainly it.</em></p><p>This was not the most assuring thought in the world, because if it was one of the big demons, the only real difference between that and a god was that it would have no regard for any humans ever at all, and there was absolutely nothing it would not do, but she made an affirmative sound in her throat just the same, so they would know she agreed, and gave the boys a nod.</p><p><em>Alright. Then at least it may have a harder time chasing after if we can make it out. </em>It was going to be hard to find a way to do that, even if the odds hadn’t been so stacked against them, but it was at least <em>technically </em>possible, right? Maybe they already had a plan of some kind, too—She was very sure now that must have been what she’d seen the leader promising his friends that one day a long time ago. To help find a way out. It was certainly worth asking, at least, and any ideas would be a help. Although it might be kind of hard to figure out how to draw that question.</p><p>Getting an idea after a second and running with it hopefully, Adiris leaned over the book and drew again for a minute, then straightened up and gestured to her work and gave them a questioning glance. She had drawn a picture of the Utukku by a hook, and herself and both of them running past it, through a gate, and to a stairway past it leading up to where she had sketched the edge of a field and the sun.</p><p>The boys leaned in and looked at it, then back at her, and they looked absolutely shocked for some reason, and Adiris suddenly felt very nervous again, because she hadn’t expected that reaction at all. <em>What? But I…I thought. I was… </em>…Maybe they didn’t want to tell her whatever they had planned, she realized with a sinking feeling. They might even think she was trying to trick them and spy. She had. Had…<em>hoped </em>they might trust her…but…but this probably made more sense…to them. After all, all she had ever done had been so horrible to them, so why on earth <em>would </em>they trust her now, after only what, a half hour of—</p><p>“You want to <em>help </em>us?” asked Dwight, breaking the stunned five second silence that had been hanging over them.</p><p>Adiris hesitated and reacted a little nervously, not sure what to try to say to him, because she couldn’t tell from his tone if that had been a question or an accusation.</p><p>“You?” asked Dwight, pointing at her then the drawing.</p><p>Still nervous, Adiris gave a nod and made an affirmative sound in her throat.</p><p>“You <em>and </em>us?” he asked again, pointing to her, then himself and Quentin, then a big circle kind of at all of them, then the picture again.</p><p>“Annam,” said Adiris worriedly, giving a nod.</p><p>Dwight just kept gaping at her. He looked suddenly like he might cry, and she had no idea what she’d done wrong.</p><p>“Why?” asked Dwight.</p><p>He had sounded almost like he was hurt when he said it, and still looked like he was going to cry, and Adiris <em>knew </em>that one—knew ‘Why,’ and it alarmed her and worried her. <em>‘Why?’ <span class="u">Why</span> would I help you? But I—You—</em>She had told them, she thought—she had thought they understood. She had thought—she had—had <em>tried</em>. <em>‘Why’?</em></p><p>“Ana ša alibbum ašanû,” pleaded Adiris, because that could only mean they didn’t believe her. She knew they had understood her saying she had been angry that they were kind and Nergal—whatever it was—hurt them. She knew they had understood when she said she was sorry. So. It had to mean they either thought she was lying, or that even if she had been sorry and mad on their behalf, they meant nothing to her beyond the significance of a fleeting moment, and she would just go on and happily send them back to a fate of being endlessly tortured, like an uncaring…god.</p><p>Her speeding pulse slowed down for a second as something about that thought made it hard to move past. <em>I am not. …I. I wouldn’t. I wish you would believe me. </em>She knew she wouldn’t, and she felt so sure the answer she had given could clarify that to them no matter which of the two they’d believed, if they were only willing to give her a chance at all, but she didn’t know how to translate the sentiment, and she wanted to cry too now.</p><p>They were both still just standing there, staring at her like they couldn’t comprehend her. As if they had no idea what she was going to do, or be to them, and might change into anything at any second, and she supposed that made sense, and the thought hurt. <em>I am not fickle, I just took a long time deciding what to believe, </em>she thought pleadingly.</p><p>Slowly, Adiris reached down and turned the pages on the book back to the spread Dwight had done, and paused with it open. “Ana ša,” she tried again more subdued and hesitantly, glancing from one to the other, and she waited a moment, then put her hand on her heart, and pointed to the drawing of her in the book where she was wounding Dwight. She waited a second, then removed her hand and shook her head, then turned back to the last drawing she had done, of her fleeing with them towards earth, and put her hand back up to her heart. “Alibbum,” she said softly, and she tapped her chest above her heart, then moved the hand to point to the drawings of the three human figures escaping, “Ašanû.”</p><p>
  <em>Because. I had a change of heart.</em>
</p><p>She looked pleadingly back at Dwight, hoping he would understand, and believe that, and then at Quentin too.</p><p>Quentin looked dumbfounded, and then put on the spot when he met her gaze, and he started to say something, then hesitated, then tried again. “I don’t. I don’t know what to say.”</p><p>On her other side, Dwight looked back down at the little book and the picture she’d left there for a few seconds, then up at her, and he still looked stunned, but not so bad, she thought—she hoped. His eyes were still a little shiny, but they were almost smiling too. “Daleelu,” offered Dwight, and he tried and did manage a smile then.</p><p>Almost instantly, Adiris felt something bump her, and jumped a little before registering Quentin wrapping his arms around her waist and burying his head against her side, eyes squeezed shut. “Thank you,” he said like he’d never meant a word more, “Thank you <span class="u">so</span> much. Daleelu.”</p><p>It was Adiris’ turn to feel stunned, and she stayed frozen for a second, staring down at the little medic, and then she heard Dwight clear his throat, and turned to look and found him struggling to regain composure and flick at an eye with a knuckle to get rid of a little of the excess moisture, and she realized suddenly that she’d read their reactions all wrong. They <em>hadn’t </em>been mistrustful, or not wanted her, or been hurt or even afraid this time. They’d been <em>moved, </em>and it—it had just been such a long time since she’d seen that emotion from somebody at all, she had forgotten really how much it could look like sadness and worry. But she hadn’t made them sad. She’d made them <em>happy</em> enough to cry.</p><p>Adiris felt overwhelming affection like a dull stab in her chest, and smiled at Dwight, then reached a hand down cautiously and patted the back of Quentin’s head. He glanced up at her when she did that, and she wasn’t sure if he’d been crying or just close to it, but he looked rough, just somehow this time in a good way, and she smiled at him too as soon as he was looking, and he returned the expression, and it was so natural. So not performative. So much like something someone had just felt. It hadn’t wanted anything except to convey gratitude. People just didn’t look at her like that, and she couldn’t get used to it, but she didn’t want it to stop. She had wanted it without knowing, for a very, very long time, and wanted it so strongly it was painful now. And it made her want to fight.</p><p><em>I can do this, </em>thought Adiris for the first time since realizing things she had never wanted to know, <em>I can save them. I can bring my people home and I can take them with us. I <span class="u">will</span>.</em></p><p>There was a sudden heaviness in the air and Adiris felt her stomach drop. <em>NO. </em>Immensely frantic, she ripped Quentin off from around her waist, snagged Dwight with her other hand without even looking, and shoved them both under the table. They had both made yelps when being shoved, and she’d been terrified they might not understand, but when she paused stooped by the table to put a finger to her lips and wave desperately at them to stay down, the looks on their faces and how totally frozen they’d both become told her they knew. Both boys pressed themselves as far back into a corner as they could, side-by-side, and Adiris snagged the book from the table and threw it at them, shoved the chairs back against the table to block the side view, then regained her composure and started to walk casually out of the room as if she had somewhere to be. She wasn’t quite to the door when the smoke solidified and the jagged, thorny claws of the thing she had thought of as Nergal appeared.</p><p>Immediately, Adiris dropped and prostrated herself on the ground before it, eyes shut.</p><p>“Adiris,” came the hissing, dark voice, tone distant but with faint tinges of familiarity and superiority. Like he always sounded. “You are still distressed.”</p><p>Adiris’ heart lurched in her chest.</p><p>
  <em>Oh no.</em>
</p><p>No. No, no, no, no. She had forgotten. She had forgotten he could do this. <em>How </em>had she forgotten? It—it wasn’t something he had ever exactly <em>said </em>out loud he knew how to do, but she should have known—she had <em>had </em>the facts, she should have interpreted them—she should have thought of this <em>instantly, </em>step one the <em>second </em>she had decided to form a plan. <em>How </em>could she had been so careless? Nergal could <em>read </em>emotions. He had never said so, but almost <em>every </em>time she had spoken to him, he had commented on things she was feeling that she had not outwardly betrayed.</p><p><em>Shit, shit! Izzirtu! </em>This was so bad—this was <em>so </em>bad. She couldn’t stay quiet, or it would be too long a silence. She was going to have to think and talk at once or it would already be over.</p><p>“…I am sorry, my God,” she said, feeling like crying, and obeying his unspoken invitation to look up by straightening up to her knees.</p><p>
  <em>Okay. You have to have a plan, and it has to be in the next six seconds, or you’re dead, and this moment becomes as far as you ever got. And then it will find them and take them too, and Gods know what it will do to your followers.</em>
</p><p>“Sorry,” echoed Nergal, “For what?”</p><p><em>He knows you’re upset, </em>Adiris told herself, heart racing, eyes fixed on the dark cloud of death and wickedly sharp claws like grim reflections of the rings on her fingers, <em>He knows that you are scared—terrified—and that you are terrified of <span class="u">him.</span> It’s too late to hide that. Justify it.</em></p><p>“I disobeyed you,” whispered Adiris, tearing up and looking back down at the floor, forcing herself to <em>feel </em>that in its entirety, exactly the way she would have this morning. <em>If you are going to do this Adiris, if you are going to have even a chance, you’re going to have to out-bluff a God. You can’t. So you have to believe the lie yourself, <span class="u">so</span> much that it can’t see you’re lying at all, because you won’t be. It is the <span class="u">only</span> way. You have to believe this and feel it with your whole heart. You have to think like Adiris of this morning, and think fast, and only feel the things she would feel no matter how well or poorly that goes. You have to be terrified. You have to be sorry. You have to be furious at the infidels. You have to love him, and you have to mean it. You have to look at him and feel in your soul how much you would die for him in an instant after everything he’s done to give you meaning when you were lost and alone and dying. You have to <span class="u">need</span> him, and <span class="u">want</span> him, be nothing deeper than your fierce, <strong>fierce</strong> devotion to your god. It is the <span class="u">only</span> way. You can’t fail here. If you can’t lie to yourself well enough to make it real, you will die, and the foreig—the <span class="u">infidels</span> will die, and every last one of your followers will either die too, or be lost here forever with no one to lead them back out. Go.</em></p><p>“Disobeyed,” said Nergal—a statement, not a question, but one demanding an answer.</p><p>Feeling overwhelming shame and guilt and regret and self-loathing, Adiris kept her head bowed and gave a nod. “I went. You ordered me to stay, but I went to the temple. I—” She looked up at him desperately, and then flinched, feeling like even daring to look at him after such a betrayal would provoke violence, but she kept going, begging to be believed. “—I swear, I only meant to look. I did not mean to disobey you and stop them. Two of them came back, after they had finished ransacking your temple, and I was curious. I wanted to fight them, but you had forbidden it, so I only went to look. I meant to be the ebb and flow like you saw I am—I never meant to disobey.”</p><p>“But you did,” said Nergal, half a question this time.</p><p>Heartbroken at what she knew she had done to the one thing that had never betrayed her, Adiris struggled to fight back tears that wanted to form, and nodded again. “I am so sorry,” she managed in a whisper, “I am <span class="u">so</span> sorry, Nergal. I…” She shut her eyes and bowed her head, overwhelmed with shame and despair, fighting back tears. “…I found them praying,” she whispered finally, forcing herself to look back up at him, because she owed him that, after all she had failed to do. She should at least not face her comeuppance like a coward. “There have…been <em>times </em>a few of them—they did things that did not make sense to me,” she forged on pleadingly, “Things that make it seem like, maybe all this suffering has provoked some kind of change, and, and you had told me a very few of your other servants were infidels who <em>had </em>changed their hearts and come to serve you, so I thought—I thought if they were praying, it had all made sense, then, and they were sorry. I captured them, and I asked them if they had been praying for forgiveness, and they said yes.”</p><p>Despite all her pleading and sorrow, there was no reaction from the cloud whatsoever. It was silent. And yet, Adiris could <em>feel </em>the weight of it—not anger, not yet, but something looming and powerful, and she knew whatever it would be, she deserved it, and she was so ashamed that most of the franticness she had been feeling left her then, and she just felt beaten, and exhausted, and sorry.</p><p>“I wanted to be sure,” she continued, lowering her head and gaze again, unworthy to look at him, “So I brought them here. To the temple. I was going to test them—to make sure they were sincere, before bringing them to you, in case I had made an error—so I would not waste your time on those unworthy. But I failed. I turned my back on one for an instant by the gate to the alter, and he jumped me, and hit me with a stone.” Her eyes filled up with tears, thinking of the shame of this all, and this time she couldn’t hold it back and she began to cry silently. “They were still there when I woke up,” she barely managed through the tears, furious at herself for crying on him like some pathetic child trying to pry mercy from their parent with a show of emotion, but she <span class="u">couldn’t</span> make herself stop, no matter how hard she tried, and that just made the misery build.</p><p>And since she couldn’t stop crying, Adiris forced her gaze back up on the dark cloud, since it was the only show of true sincerity she <em>could </em>force herself to offer, as painful and horrible as it felt, and as much as she knew she didn’t deserve to be in his presence anymore. Gods, she couldn’t bear that. <em>He’s not going to want me, </em>she realized, completely overcome with despair, <em>I am no longer fit to be his high priestess after being defiled, and he will hate me now. He will be disappointed, and cast me aside, and I will be lucky if he even lets me live and stay as a servant. Gods, could I have done anything more wrong?</em> She squeezed her eyes shut for a moment, struggling with everything she had to make it through the awful feeling that thought had provoked and keep going.</p><p>“I was tied to a gate with my own incense burner chain,” she managed in a choked whisper, looking back into the dark cloud, “And gagged. They had stayed and waited for me to wake up, instead of fleeing, and taken my headdress off, and—” She had to stop for a moment because the urge to weep had gotten too strong, but she fought it down and kept going. “And I thought they would kill me,” she whispered to the cloud, tears running down the sides of her face, “But they didn’t.” Her shoulders started to pitch with choked back sobs. “They forced me to commit blasphemy instead.”</p><p>She broke down then and started sobbing, unable to fight it back, but she knew that if she stopped confessing, he would think she was doing this to get out of it, and she wasn’t—she wouldn’t—she just couldn’t stop. She was <em>so </em>sorry, so was so, so sorry. She had never felt this awful, never. “One of them could heal, with magic,” she said through her weeping, “I didn’t know—I didn’t know. I tried to fight them, but I failed, and the one with magic <em>healed </em>me. Took away some of your infection I bear as tribute to you and a sign of my devotion.” Adiris collapsed forward against her hands, trying to deal with the force the power of her sobs where ripping her apart with. “I am so sorry. I am so sorry! I begged them to stop—I fought with all I had! But they did not stop for me, not until it had been many minutes and they had what they wanted, and then they fled, and I couldn’t even get myself free in time to chase after them or call to you. I failed. I failed, and they left me defiled and blasphemous and alive so I would have to face you like this and show you how utterly I failed. I am so sorry.”</p><p>Shaking and wracked with sobs, Adiris flung herself against the ground at Nergal’s feet again and pressed her face to the floor, begging for mercy. “Please, Nergal. I am so sorry. I know I have failed you. After everything you have done for me, I was proud and I let that make me betray you. I know I am no longer fit to be your priestess or in your presence, but please, please! Please don’t send me away!” She squeezed her eyes shut, broken heart racing so fast she was afraid it would burst, shaking on the ground and watching visions of her father’s back vanishing into a crowd for the last time play against her eyelids. “Please, please,” she whispered brokenheartedly, weeping against the floor, “let me stay as a temple slave. Let me serve you. I am wrong and broken and unclean, but I love you, and I want to serve you. I could redeem myself! I could redeem myself enough to be worth to sweep your floors. <em>Please.</em>”</p><p>She stopped then, weeping more quietly and trembling before her God, terrified of the waiting silence.</p><p>Sound did not come first though. Movement did. And she suddenly felt a wickedly sharp, burning metallic talon set down against her back, and she was sure it would run her through and this would be how she would die, and she had done it to herself, and she squeezed her eyes shut tighter and tried to brace.</p><p>“…Adiris,” came the voice of Nergal above her, and it was not angry, or seething, or disappointed, disgusted like she had expected. It was kind. Like the voice of a parent speaking to a child who was afraid of something they did not understand. “You will not be killed. You will not be cast out.”</p><p>Shocked, Adiris stopped crying momentarily and opened her eyes, but kept her head bowed, barely daring to believe it.</p><p>“You are not broken or wrong or defiled; you did not betray me,” continued Nergal in the same soothing tone, and her eyes filled up with tears, unable to deal with the incredible mercy and love in those words, and she began to cry silently again, “You are my high priestess for a reason, Adiris. It has always been your fate to find your way here, to me, to become who you are right now. You were born to be this.”</p><p>The talon lifted from her back, and Adiris could tell that he wanted her to rise, and she was eager and desperate to do anything to please him, so as afraid and ashamed and fragile as she still was, she shakily pushed herself back up off the floor until she was sitting and propped against her arms, half-bowed, and afraid to do it but more afraid not to do it, she made herself look up at him again.</p><p>“You have made a terrible mistake today,” said Nergal as he retracted his claw, his voice a little more hard, and Adiris hung her head, ashamed and wounded but knowing he was utterly right and she more than deserved whatever he chose to do with her, “But.” His tone changed again. “You make your mistakes out of loyalty.” The kindness was back with the words, but even stronger than before. Relenting, almost loving even. Like somehow he wasn’t disappointed, wasn’t angry, or disgusted, or tired of her at all. Like he was almost proud somehow, and it didn’t make sense, but she was desperately grateful for it and it made her want to weep again to be shown it in the face of how little she deserved anything but punishment for what she had done. “Like I have told you before,” continued Nergal in the same tone, “Your failings are born of devotion and faith and passion. That is a failing, but it is not a traitorous one, Adiris. It is just an aspect of what you are. You cannot be perfect, for you are mine. You are the ebb and flow. You will be forgiven. But you will be punished, as well.”</p><p>Her heart sunk a little, but she nodded dutifully. No matter what punishment he gave her, it would still be so much more than she deserved. “Whatever you will do with me,” promised Adiris, head down.</p><p>“Stand,” commanded Nergal.</p><p>A more specific command than ‘rise’. It meant he wanted her on her feet, and now, and Adiris obliged immediately.</p><p>“Do not move,” ordered Nergal, and Adiris gave a nod and froze.</p><p>Slowly, her God extended one of his long claws and placed it against her chest above her heart, and Adiris felt her pulse quicken erratically with fear, but she forced herself to stay perfectly still like she had been commanded.</p><p>“Since you have committed blasphemy, but against your will. Disobeyed my directions and interfered with the infidels, but in an attempt to serve me better. Failed through pride, and already been brought low for it. I will give you a matching sentence. A gift and a punishment together, for your failing and your faithfulness go together, Adiris; may it be a reminder to you of this and what you have learned forever, and be worn as a mark of that shame, but may it also be a gift to remind you of your faith and that even at your lowest, you have always been mine, and may you bear that gift willingly.” Pronouncement finished, Nergal dug the claw in.</p><p>It didn’t go in deep, not deep enough to pass ribs—just barely enough to draw blood, but it was as hot as a sword pulled glowing from a furnace, and it was all she could do to muffle the volume of her agonized scream and reject her body’s desperate attempt to get her to fling herself away from it. For one horrifying moment, Adiris thought she sensed movement behind her, from back by the table, <em>but that was impossible,</em> of course—whatever Nergal was doing to her, she did not think there was a second part he would bring at her from behind, that was just the fear talking. Nothing would come out and make this worse. And if it did, she would deserve it. <em>GODS, </em>it was agonizing, and the fear had somehow been a moment of relief, but the burning was getting worse every second now, even though he hadn’t moved the claw at all or dug it in further, and confused and scared, Adiris looked down at her chest, and saw something deep black like the claws themselves seeping out of him and into her, and her heart lurched with terror, and the darkness burned against the little damaged skin she had left, and seared itself into her, and she couldn’t fight the volume of her screams anymore and they came, horrible and mixed with tears as the unbearable burning kept going against her chest, and then suddenly Nergal withdrew his claw, and it was over.</p><p>Strength gone as if she had been sucked dry, Adiris collapsed against the ground with no ability to catch herself, and whimpered. The pain was so much less than it had been, but she could still feel it burning her beneath the skin, relentless and harsh. It was all she could do to breathe and stifle her cries.</p><p>“There. It is over,” said Nergal in a soothing voice.</p><p>That was also a command to rise again, and she knew it, but she didn’t know if she was strong enough to. It didn’t matter, though, she would have to be, for him, and she dug deep and dragged herself up to her knees again, arms shaking. “Thank you,” she whispered, tearing up and hanging her head again, overwhelmed. Before, she had not been sure what exactly he had done to her, but with her head down, she could see it now. There was a symbol burned into her skin, and she knew it. It was similar to a seal he had given her to use once—it was a symbol of himself and his domain of sickness and suffering. The version he had chosen here was two of his talons, curled around each other almost like hooks meant to attach together to form a link—one coming down from above, another reaching up from below, and coiling together where they met in the center. The black mark was singed into her skin above her heart, and it was burned in deep—a brand.</p><p>“I don’t deserve this,” said Adiris, looking back up at the cloud again, voice catching in her throat. It was a gift and a punishment indeed, but the gift was so precious. After everything she had done and lost today, it was too gracious for him to give to her—too merciful, and sacred, and it broke her heart.</p><p>“It is because you think you don’t that you do,” said Nergal very surely, “You hold loyalty and devotion in your heart above all, so you will never meet the standards you set for yourself, but in fighting for what you cannot reach, you meet exactly the priestess I want you to be. Even knowing I might rid myself of you or cast you aside, you bowed down and told me the truth, out of loyalty. That makes you worthy.”</p><p>She started to cry again, overcome by the kindness and compassion of that, and struggled to fight it back so she would be able to talk. Her chest ached and she was overwhelmed by the strength of her gratitude and sorrow and remorse. “Thank you,” managed Adiris, “I will not let you down again.”</p><p>“You will,” said Nergal, and it hurt, “But you will not mean to, and you will return closer than before.”</p><p>That was probably the most intimate and meaningful thing someone had ever said to Adiris, her entire life, and to be told it by her God was almost too much to comprehend. She had been so sure he would be furious and rid himself of her for this, and that she had failed too utterly to ever return this time, and he was showing her mercy and love. It was almost impossible to think she might actually matter even a little to something like a God—they were <em>so </em>far above mortals, but. But just the same, she clung to the words and kept them. She had always been fiercely devoted to Nergal—since the day he had saved her in that cave—but <em>never </em>more than this instant. Because she had never thought she might be able to devote herself enough to him that it would mean something to him—to a God—but even if just a little, she must have, and she wanted to weep again with the thought, even with what must be so little water left in her body to weep with at all. <em>I love you. I love you—I would die for you. I won’t let you down. I won’t make you sorry. I want to repay this in full. I’ll make you proud—I’ll become exactly what you want me to be, I know it. I’m here. I’m listening. Whatever you have planned for me, I can do it. I know I could.</em></p><p>“Thank you,” said Adiris. She had finally beaten the crying. Her heart was <em>so </em>happy and relieved and full of hope. When things had all gone wrong, she had thought it might be her last day living, or that she would lose everything she had, but somehow, she was better than before. And Adiris raised her hand to the mark on her chest and placed her palm against it, even though that seared. “I will treasure this.”</p><p>“Good,” replied Nergal, and the darkness in the air shifted, “That is its purpose. Now tell me exactly what happened—in detail. Which of the infidels did this to you?”</p><p>“Yes, my God,” said Adiris, bowing her head. Absently, she scratched at the stone floor with one of her rings, feeling deeply sorrowful again about everything that had happened. “I will take you to the alter, and show you the damage to the temple.” Her eyes welled up again, awful guilt at having let one of the holiest rooms in the entire building be desecrated under her watch.</p><p>“Do so,” said Nergal, and the cloud shifted a little towards the entryway. A command to rise and proceed.</p><p>Adiris gave a nod, and felt the ring she had been scratching at the stone floor with slip off, and ignored it. She could reclaim that later. She would not keep her God waiting. Bowing low with her head against the floor one more time first, Adiris mustered her courage to face showing what damage she had caused, and then stood up. She felt awful—lightheaded and wobbly and sick, but she fought through that, and lead the way through the archway, deeper into the temple towards the alter. <em>He will forgive you, </em>she promised herself, trying to stay focused on doing her duty and to not let all the emotions banging against her skull in, <em>He forgave you before. You can redeem yourself.</em></p><p>
  
</p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>“Let’s go!” called Jake, agitation and impatience off the charts.</p><p>Through the woods, Claudette could just barely make out him and the others and the hint of frantic action.</p><p>“Jake!” she called, dashing ahead because she knew Quentin and Dwight couldn’t, and poor Jake deserved to know as soon as possible, “It’s okay! It’s all okay—they’re back!”</p><p>Jake turned from where he’d been standing at the edge of the campfire, long wooden stake spear thing in hand, trying to rush the last few people into hauling up the supplies they needed for a sneak attempt or a fight, and she saw his features flood with relief and smiled.</p><p>“They’re okay?” he asked quickly, hurrying to meet her by the tree line, and then looking past her for them in the woods.</p><p>“Yeah, we’re okay!” called Dwight, still a little too far into the woods to be seen, “My leg’s a little cut up though, so we’re coming slow!”</p><p>Looking equal parts happy and relieved, Jake almost smiled, and at the same time Claudette heard him mutter something she thought was, “God damn it,” under his breath, and then he was past her, booking towards the woods to meet them.</p><p>Several of the others were right on Jake’s heels, and Claudette turned and went with them to meet Quentin and Dwight. Her heart was still <em>pounding </em>with excitement and adrenaline. It had been less than an hour ago that Jake and she had set off to make sure Dwight and Quentin were okay, only to find blood on the floor of the chapel and no friends. They’d taken off and called for them, and she had been so horribly afraid the Clown <em>was </em>there after all, hiding in some corner, playing mind games to get a shot at hunting them, and it had been everything she could do not to have a breakdown—and then she’d <em>seen </em>them. <em>Seen </em>Quentin and Dwight—their auras, anyway, and in the <em>next realm over; </em>deep in the underbelly of the Plague’s temple. The bottom had dropped out of her stomach, and she’d called for Jake, and booked it to the border, and then stopped because there had been Quentin’s hat hanging on a stick and a note there tied to it, and written in what was <em>definitely </em>Quentin’s handwriting—she’d only seen him write a few times, but it was a pretty memorable mess. And together, she and Jake had read it.</p><p>The note had said they were okay. That the Plague had shown up in the temple, and caught them, but she hadn’t tried to kill them. She seemed to want them to go with her, and she was acting like it wasn’t to go get murdered, and that Dwight’s leg was a little cut from taking a hit when he tried to run, so they couldn’t get away easy, and were going to go. That they didn’t want the others to come after them and get killed. They would try to run away as soon as they got the chance, but it might be a bit, and Dwight wanted someone to come stay by the border so they could hear them shout for help if something went wrong.</p><p>And at first, Claudette had just been overwhelmingly glad and relieved, because they weren’t dead! They were okay, and the Plague wasn’t exactly the least horrible killer, but she for sure wasn’t one of the most cruel, and if the reason Dwight’s leg was hurt was that she’d hit him <em>before </em>this happened and they left the note, then things might even be going okay! He was alive, and she could see him sitting. But then she’d remembered Quentin—that Quentin had cuts on his neck like he’d been choked half to death, and there was nothing in the note to explain that, and her fear had come back as fast as relief had settled.</p><p>The second he’d read the note, Jake had pretty much said, “Fuck that,” and tried to go into the Plague’s realm to save them, and honestly, Claudette had really wanted to also say, “Fuck that,” and go rush in, but it would have been stupid. They had no plan, no weapons, and it would be a bit before anyone came to look for <em>them. </em>If they snuck in, they needed someone good at sneaking—they needed Nea. They needed Laurie here to be able to aura read the Plague. They needed help, and she’d just barely gotten Jake to stop and think, and after she’d assured him that neither was hurt very bad, and they weren’t running or hiding, just sitting and maybe talking, as far as she could see, he’d calmed down and agreed with her that probably just meant they were locked up somewhere, and it would be smarter to go get help. He’d told her to stay at the border and watch, and to scream for help as loud as she could if things got worse and they looked seriously in trouble, and that he’d be back with the others as fast as he possibly could, and then he’d run off into the woods and left her alone. Where she’d stayed, watching long-distance with worry.</p><p>They had seemed okay, though. After a bit, they got up and walked around a little, and then crawled under something, and one time she thought Quentin either <em>hugged </em>something or tried to lift a barrel maybe that he just wasn’t strong enough to pick up, and then so did Dwight, at the same time, and that was extremely confusing to watch, but no one got hurt. And then to her extreme shock, she’d watched their auras sit down perfectly still for a few minutes, then crawl out from whatever they’d been under, pause for a few seconds, and then just absolutely <em>book it</em> through the temple, up the stairs, and out the back, circling towards her, and then suddenly she’d been seeing them for real, and she’d seen the looks of surprised <em>“Claudette???” </em>on their faces when they saw her waiting, and lip read both forming the word still too far and quiet at a run to be actually heard, and then she’d been practically jumping out of the way not to be knocked over, and Dwight had caught onto her shoulders wheezing, and she’d still been trying to figure out why on earth he was wearing some shepherd robe made out of fancy white cloth cut like feathers with gold highlights and where his shirt was or where Quentin’s jacket was for that matter when he’d gasped out, “We gotta go! Fast—to—the campfire—Entity’s back there—can’t be seen,” and then grabbed her arm and tried to pull her with him, and he’d seemed like he knew what he was talking about, so of course she’d gone, and Dwight had been injured and having some trouble running on his leg, so she and Quentin had kind of four-legged-race style both tried to help him while the two of them had taken turns spouting way too much wildly impossible information back to back in out of breath spurts for her to process. It was a lot. She had only gotten the bare bones version herself on her way back, and <em>she </em>still could barely believe it.</p><p>“Thank <span class="u">God,</span>” said Jake, pulling Dwight into a hug and putting an arm around Quentin’s shoulder, which neither of them seemed to have expected at all, and since it was Jake, she could definitely understand that. He wasn’t a very touchy-feely person. But he had been <em>really </em>worried. Honestly, it had been the most freaked out Claudette thought she’d ever seen him. <em>Probably the most freaked out I’ve ever been too… </em>she thought ruefully.</p><p>Almost as soon as the show of affection had started though, it stopped, and Jake let go of them both and took a step back. “What the fuck happened?” he continued urgently, “Did you sneak out—”</p><p>“<em>—Yeah! </em>And what’re you <em>wearing?</em>” asked Meg as she and the others joined them.</p><p>“Oh, uh,” said Dwight, glancing down at the robe thing he had on.</p><p>“What happened to your shirt?” asked Laurie.</p><p>“Are you okay?” chimed in Ace worriedly almost on top of that, and there was a sudden chorus of similar sentiments and questions all at once from everyone.</p><p>“Look—look, it’s a lot, and I should probably look at Dwight’s leg again since he ran on it,” said Quentin petitioningly over the noise, “Can we maybe go sit down and then go through the whole thing? It’s been kind of a rough day.”</p><p>“Yeah, I’ll bet,” said Jake more to himself than to them, “But—sure—yeah, come on,” he added, stepping back and motioning them after. And then, thinking better of it, he moved up again and went to get an arm under Dwight’s shoulder and glanced at Quentin, “Here—I can do that. You look exhausted.”</p><p>“Well,” said Quentin gratefully, smiling a little and obliging and letting Jake take his place as human crutch, “I <em>always </em>look exhausted, but you’re not wrong.”</p><p>“Thanks,” said Dwight, offering Jake a smile as he started to help him towards the campfire.</p><p>“You two sure you’re okay?” asked Ace worriedly, falling into step behind them as they went past, and giving Quentin a worried glance over his shoulder.</p><p>“Pretty sure,” answered Dwight without much worry.</p><p>“What about you?” asked Claudette, falling into step by Quentin.</p><p>“Aye,” agreed David, giving him concerned looks.</p><p>Quentin glanced over at David and then her as if that had been an unexpected question, and then felt his neck like he’d only just remembered it was kind of fucked up. “Oh. Yeah—sorry. I’m alright. Uhm—I mean I think I am. It hurts, but not bad. Can <em>you </em>tell?” he added hopefully.</p><p>Claudette squinted at the wound and tried to focus as much as possible on reading it. Cuts, bruises. It didn’t seem bad to her either. No internal something crushed. “I think it’s just cuts and bruises,” she answered, offering him a relieved smile.</p><p>Quentin returned the smile and gave a nod.</p><p>“Sooo, what exactly <em>did </em>happen with the Plague, since you guys are okay and Dwight maybe stole her clothes?” asked Feng as they reached the campfire and people started to sit back down.</p><p>“Yeah—we expected to have to break you out of there,” added Tapp, who was looking a highly irregular mixture of very relieved and very concerned.</p><p>“Uh—<em>well</em>,” said Dwight in the voice of someone who had a not very believable story to tell and knew it, “It was a lot, so it’s kind of a long story, but.” He hesitated, and then glanced at Quentin, then the whole circle of friends expectantly or worriedly awaiting an answer, and smiled at them. “It’s good news.”</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>“So, does that mean she’s still gonna help…?”</p><p>Quentin glanced up from the fire and forced himself to refocus on Nea and the conversation going on around him. So much had happened today, honestly, he was kind of just holding on right now, trying to process it all. No killer had <em>ever </em>done a thing like this before, but—and this felt like a stupid thing to be so hung up on—but he was starting to be really worried now—or—or really <em>something</em>, that some of the others might be like her. Be…somebody that had been lied to. Once they’d hit the point in the story where he passed out and Dwight was the only one conscious, Quentin had mostly stayed quiet and let him tell it, even once he had been awake for stuff again—except the part about his arm. And because his mind wandered and flew through topics whether he wanted it to or not, no matter how much he tried to listen, as soon as he had stopped talking, Quentin had gone down so many endless paths in his head, wondering about that. Wondering about if any of the other killers here thought he was some kind of horrible criminal, and they were meeting out justice. There were <em>so many </em>killers now. And—and he felt sure about some of them—a lot of them. So many were cruel and gleeful about it, and they knew for absolutely certain at least a few were straight up serial killers before getting here. But there were…also others.</p><p>For a long time, Quentin had always kind of thought the Nurse wasn’t like the rest. Honestly, pretty much <em>everyone </em>at least preferred her to most of the things that hunted them—because she was fast, and she wasn’t cruel, and she didn’t have the most painful ways of killing or injuring you—Quentin didn’t want to take anything, but he’d take a bone saw to his back or getting strangled to death over being chainsawed down or eaten alive any goddamn day of the week. But it was more than that for Quentin—and for some of the others—he knew at <em>least </em>Claudette, Ace, and Kate felt the same way. She had always seemed…fuck—there was no real way to describe it—but. One time, maybe a couple months after arriving in the realm, Quentin had seen the Nurse kill David. And that had been so awful—God, he—he’d been trying to get to them in time to save him, and he’d just been too far away, and too late, and he’d seen him die. And it had been too late to do anything for him then, so Quentin had slid behind a rock, praying not to be noticed and hating himself for failing his friend, and he’d seen her let go of David’s throat now that he’d gone still, and she’d stroked his face for a second—or—maybe ‘patted’ was a more accurate way to describe it. And. And it hadn’t been…hadn’t been <em>sick, </em>or fucked up, or possessive or gross, or any of the things a gesture like that could have been—should have been, in a situation like that. It had been sad, and affectionate, and gentle. Like…like the way a dad might cup his kid’s cheek for a second while they tossed and slept weekly after a fever that had finally broken, or…like a mom might caress her son’s face for the last time before closing the lid on a casket.</p><p>And God, he’d known he had to be wrong—that there was no <em>way </em>that made sense. He had to be misreading, or projecting, or remembering it just all wrong, but it had <em>fucked </em>him <em>up. </em>His mind had flashed back, and he had replayed the seconds he’d seen while David was still alive, and David had been beating her with his fists, trying to get her off, or kill her, and she hadn’t hit him back. Not once. She’d just taken it, no retaliation, focus entirely on crushing his windpipe. And why? It wasn’t like she couldn’t have done both. And killers…killers <em>always</em> retaliated. Even just being good at avoiding traps and helping the others avoid them too had gotten Feng tunneled by the Trapper since like her third week here. But the Nurse hadn’t. She hadn’t… And God, he couldn’t understand it. And…the next time he’d been in a Nurse trial, he had been the last one standing, and he had been way too careless running for a door, because he hadn’t been afraid of her enough, even feeling the heaviness of a trial with permission granted for a killer to end them itself hanging in the air. And she’d caught him—even as fast as he could open doors. She had blinked out of nowhere and been on top of him and caught him with the saw, and he’d stumbled back against the door he had been so close to getting open, and he’d seen her go to swing at him again and dived out of the way, and come up beside the gate, backed into a corner, and known it was over. The Nurse had come at him, weapon raised to down him, and his back had hit the wall, and with nowhere to go and too injured to have a shot at ducking past and outrunning her, he’d just thrown his arms up to try and make the hit he was about to take as bearable as possible, and she hadn’t even hit him. As soon as she’d seen he’d basically given up on running, she’d lowered the saw and just shot forward and caught him by the throat and knocked him to the ground, and he had been so surprised, because even dying this way was so much less painful than being hacked up with the bonesaw and living, he had just stared at her and forgotten to fight back. Things didn’t miss the opportunity to hit you. A lot of the time, they did it for fun. And he couldn’t understand it. But something had been wrong, and she’d just choked him to death—fast—like she was adept. Like she had studied the quickest way to kill someone like that.</p><p>Nothing had come of that, except Quentin feeling strange about the Nurse, and in some kind of fucked up way, relieved to be killed by her over everything else here whenever he got her, and the being fucked up about the way she’d looked killing David had faded, until a couple months back, when the Wraith had let him go. And Dwight had said today that that had happened to him as well. A long time ago, it had happened to an entire trial full of people. <em>And why? </em>thought Quentin desperately, <em>Why would he do this, but never twice in a row. Only sometimes, and then it’s like he doesn’t even remember after. Is he afraid to get caught? Does he get punished after? </em>He had never even known <em>why </em>the Wraith had let him go the time he did. The Wraith had been chasing him in Ormond, and he’d hit him with the sickle so hard he’d gone flying backwards and into one of the big burn barrels that were littered around most trial areas. Usually Quentin didn’t even register the things, but he was flung into the barrel with so much force he knocked it over, and it had come down on top of him, and suddenly there had been scalding hot metal against his legs and coals raining down on his chest and arms and face, and <em>God, </em>burning was one of the worst kinds of pain he had ever felt and he had been so sure he was going to burn to death, and terrified of that because it was one of the few ways he’d never had to die before. All he could remember was screaming and writhing and trying to roll out from under the barrel and put himself out in the snow, but he’d been trapped, and then the barrel had shifted suddenly and he’d been able to make it, and flung himself against the ground on his stomach, trying desperately to stop the unimaginable burning in his limbs. He’d known the Wraith had to still be there, watching this, and been waiting for it to grab him and drag him to a hook, but it didn’t, and the fear of waiting for that had become unbearable, so he’d dragged himself up onto an arm to look at the monster, and it had been just standing there, staring at him. He must have been some kind of horrific sight, because he hadn’t been able to open his left eye at all anymore, and it was the most pain Quentin thought he had ever been in, and he could see bones in his left arm, but that shouldn’t have been enough to stop one of the monsters. And still, the Wraith had just stayed there, frozen, and then they’d heard the exits power on.</p><p>And still. Still the Wraith didn’t grab him. It had glanced towards the closer of the two doors for a moment, then back to Quentin, and stayed still. It had only maybe been six seconds, but that was all Quentin had been able to bear away from the snow, so he’d let his arm give out and fallen against it again, shuddering and trying to make his crying as inaudible as possible, laying a little on his side to try and be able to still see the Wraith, and seeing him like that, it had reached for him <em>immediately, </em>and with some kind of urgency, and he hadn’t tried to fight or run at all, because honestly, he <em>wanted </em>it to throw him on a hook and sacrifice him. Nothing that had <em>ever </em>happened to Quentin had been as painful as the burning that was still happening in his flesh, and he would have taken a killing in a heartbeat, because to him it could only have been a mercy killing. It hadn’t grabbed him by his throat, though, which was odd—it had grabbed him by his jacket—and with its left hand, when usually it would have used its right, and it had <em>run </em>to the nearest exit with him like a man escaping a fire, pulled the switch for the gate himself, which Quentin hadn’t even known a killer could do, and then literally <em>flung </em>him past the barrier to safety. And Quentin had hit the dirt past the barrier and felt the burning stop and his body heal, and dragged himself to his hands and knees to stare at the Wraith, and noticed only then that its hand was burned—its right hand—badly—and he’d remembered the way the barrel that had been too heavy had suddenly lifted. The man with the sickle had still just been staring at him, like he was the one panicked for some reason, and Quentin’s eyesight had come back in his left eye, and he had tried to say, “Thank you.” But then he’d been gone, and the trial over. He wasn’t even sure if he’d gotten enough of the “Thank” out for the Wraith to have known what he was going to say.</p><p>When that had happened, Quentin had <em>planned </em>to tell the others about it. But. But there had been another time the Wraith had done something a little like this, and people had gotten their hopes up, and nothing had come of it, and it had been <em>such </em>a bad week. They’d had a really awful trial with Clown maybe five days ago, and people weren’t doing so hot, so he’d thought, <em>I’ll just wait until I see him again, just one more time to make sure, </em>and he had, and it had been on Coldwind Farm, and he’d seen the Wraith right at the start—on a hill, looking for them while invisible, just a vague shimmering silhouette, and Quentin had run for the hill immediately and made it halfway up before being a little afraid and wary of the man waiting at the top, and he’d stopped there and looked up at the invisible form he’d known could only be the Wraith and said, “Thank you. For last time. I-I’m sorry—I tried to say that before I vanished. I was in so much pain I was thinking too slow. But thank you. I don’t know why you did it, but thank—” and then the thing had burned out of invisibility and cut him down with the sickle, and the hope he’d felt had died in his chest. It had been like he wasn’t even the same person anymore.</p><p>So he had never told the others about it, except for Laurie, because what would it matter? Nothing had changed, and there was no reason to warn them or something—no matter how many times Quentin replayed it in his head, it never seemed like the time with the fire had been a trick. Just. It must have been something he couldn’t understand. And he hadn’t wanted to get someone else’s hopes up only to be dashed the way his had, so he’d just kept it to himself and been sad about it.</p><p>But now?</p><p>Now Quentin was thinking about it again, and about every single moment of maybe humanity or mercy or hesitation a killer had ever shown him, and there wasn’t much there, but there never had been with the Plague either, had there? And fuck. God, Quentin didn’t<em> want </em>any of the other killers to be like her—he didn’t want to have to feel bad for the person killing him because they were being used and manipulated and wouldn’t have done it if they’d known—that was—All of this, all the trials and suffering and dying, it was fucking unbearable enough when he got to hate everyone hurting him with a burning passion. What the fuck was he supposed to do with all this pain if there were ones he was supposed to feel <em>bad </em>for? Did he…like. Did he have a <em>moral </em>obligation to try to reach out to them, if he thought that might be going on? Did he already have enough doubts about the Wraith and the Nurse that he was going to have to try to talk to them sometime, and almost definitely just die really painfully for his trouble? Like, fuck, he didn’t want to do that. Everything was already unbearable enough as it was! But.</p><p>But if there were people out there who needed to be saved, and he had any way to try to do it, he probably had to. It was…just the right thing to do, not matter how fucking painful and miserable for him it was going to be. But that didn’t make him any less miserable and daunted by the idea…</p><p>“I don’t know,” said Dwight, and Quentin tried again to focus on the conversation instead of his own trains of thought, “I think so. I just don’t know what that looks like.”</p><p><em>‘Is she still going to help,’ </em>echoed Quentin in his head. And that was the thing he <em>really </em>didn’t want to think about—had been trying not to. Because that was going to be too much to deal with if it happened, and after everything they’d been through today and learned about her and the way she’d been and spoken and looked at them, it shouldn’t, but.</p><p>…But what if it was like the Wraith?</p><p>God, he was so, <em>so fucking</em> terrified of that. And he was so glad he’d never told the others about that day with the Wraith at all, because he didn’t <em>want </em>anyone else around the fire to be feeling this. It was awful. But what if that happened? What if after everything that had happened today, the next time he saw her, she was like a totally different person again, and he tried to walk up to her and say the like, two things he’d learned in Akkadian, and she just vomited all over him and beat him to death with her incense burner? He didn’t think he could fucking take that. Quentin was just—</p><p>God. He was so, <em>so </em>tired of losing friends. It scared him so much. And he had <em>really </em>liked her. Maybe that was dumb, after everything she’d done—fuck, I mean, she’d tried to choke him to death <em>today, </em>but. She had been <em>so </em>real. So much like any normal person he could have met back home at school, or at a concert, or passing each other in the park. He had really liked her…</p><p>Tapp and Laurie were saying something to Dwight about the Entity showing up back under the temple, but Quentin wasn’t really hearing it. He was just thinking about <em>being </em>there again.</p><p>When they’d been under that table, they’d both known the <em>second </em>the air got heavy what was going on. He had been so sure the Entity would find them and things would break bad, and the room itself had been <em>stifling. </em>Quentin had felt the Entity’s presence before, a little—in the basement, on the hook—but never like this. It had been like someone had cast a spell on him that <em>only </em>allowed him to feel fear, and he had been feeling so fucking much of it he’d wanted to curl up in a corner and die. It had weighed on him like a physical force, like being so deep in the ocean the water pressure was beginning to crush you.</p><p>And then Adiris had started weeping.</p><p>Like—like full-on sobbing her heard out, and Quentin had been on the side closer to her, so he’d just <em>barely </em>been able to lean far enough without being visible where he could see her a little past one of the chairs, and she had looked <em>awful. </em>Sad, and guilty, and terrified, and heartbroken. She’d looked as sad as she had when they’d crawled under this table to go try to talk to her. And he’d had no idea what the <em>fuck</em> the Entity was saying to her, or her to it, but she had done so much bowing, and weeping, and cowering, and what sounded like pleading and begging, he had been kind of sick seeing it. For the life of him, he couldn’t formulate a single fucking idea what she could have been saying. And then she’d stood up, and it had done something to her. He hadn’t really been able to see from under the table once she was standing, but he’d heard her scream in agony, and he’d <em>wanted </em>to go to help her—had started to, but Dwight had caught him and furiously shook his head and mouthed, <em>“DON’T. That’s a <span class="u">pain</span> scream. <span class="u">Not</span> fear. She knows we’re here. If she wants us, she can call. If she’s in trouble and too hurt to call for help, it’ll be a <span class="u">FEAR</span> scream. Trust. Her.” </em>And Quentin had seen in his eyes how much he hated it too, but also his assurance that what he’d said was the right call, and Quentin had known it was, and that he had been right, so he had obeyed and stayed down as much as it hurt to hear her screaming.</p><p>She’d dropped a few seconds later and stayed on the floor, whimpering, and he hadn’t been able to really see what the Entity had done to her, but at least her head had been okay, and there wasn’t any blood seeping out of her, so it couldn’t be fatal. He’d started to try to passively heal her a little, if he could, and then realized what a fucking bad idea that would be if the Entity saw it, and had pulled back and tried to just focus on keeping very still. Beside him, Dwight had looked worried as fuck, and Quentin had really felt that, but somehow the commisery had helped him feel a lot better, like Dwight kind of always did.</p><p>Not long after that, Adiris had started scratching the floor with her ring, and Dwight had been fine, but Quentin had wanted to die because to his ADHD brain that had been like fingernails on a chalkboard, and then she’d stopped suddenly and stood up, and walked out of the room, and the Entity’s presence had gone with her, and it had just been him and Dwight alone, trying to figure out what the <em>FUCK </em>had just gone on.</p><p>He wasn’t sure which of them it had hit first, but it had occurred to both of them only after she was gone that what had just happened might have been <em>very </em>bad. Because. The Entity had seemed not furious with her at the end there, and she had definitely been worshiping it and not attacking it, no matter what she’d said to them about helping earlier—and probably that was just her being smart, because she hadn’t told it they were under the table either, but after having heard her weep and beg and sound so full of sorrow and love and devotion in an emotional display like Quentin had never <em>seen, </em>there had been just this one little <em>sliver </em>of doubt, reinforced by months and months of being beaten and killed by the girl. Quentin had asked Dwight in a whisper if he thought they should wait for her to come back, or follow, or run for the campfire, and Dwight had started to answer, and then his brow had furrowed, and he’d said, “She dropped her ring.”</p><p>She had. The index finger little claw ring for her right hand—the one she’d been scratching the floor with—and before Dwight had even said it, Quentin had known that <em>could only be </em>on purpose, and they’d hurried out from their hiding place while Dwight voiced that sentiment, and dashed to the piece of gold jewelry to find a tiny picture scratched badly into the floor. A stick human shape, with an arrow pointing from it, to a fire with another human stick shape beside it. It was simple and completely devoid of detail, but they’d both known <em>instantly </em>what it meant, and if she’d needed to say it fast enough for it to be worth leaving a picture that could be found <span class="u">and</span> losing a ring? It meant fucking <em>bolt </em>home to your campfire.</p><p>So, super worried for her but also overcome with relief that that had to mean she was still on their side, they had. Dwight had snatched the ring and scratched over the stone floor to make the picture unreadable, and then they’d shot off through the temple underbelly as quietly and fast as they could, out the temple back to avoid the people camped out front, and straight for the border where to their shock, Claudette had been waiting for them.</p><p>And Quentin had felt great. Until they’d gotten to the campfire, and people had started talking, and they’d told enough that people knew the Plague had kind of helped them, and the first person had asked something about next time. And fuck. He couldn’t know.</p><p>
  <em>Why did the Entity burn her? If she didn’t tell it where we were, what was she sobbing about?</em>
</p><p>And what had happened to the Wraith, months ago, when he’d gone from burning his hand to pull Quentin out from under searing coals, to a thing that had cut him down without hesitation when he’d run to him to just try to thank him. What if whatever that had been happened again?</p><p>“How exactly does she plan to help us, then?” asked Jane with great interest, and now pretty damn desperate to <em>distract </em>himself from his thoughts, Quentin tuned back in.</p><p>“We’re not exactly sure,” said Dwight slowly, “The Entity showed up before she got a chance to tell us. But she drew her running away from the realm with us, so she’s at least on board.”</p><p>“But no actual plan?” asked Laurie.</p><p>“Could you guess if she had any idea how to do it?” suggested Adam in the same vein.</p><p>“Uh, I’m not sure,” said Dwight, glancing at Quentin for his take, but all Quentin could offer was a shrug, “She didn’t seem like she definitely <em>didn’t </em>have a plan, but we got cut off to early.”</p><p>“She did draw stairs, which is a weird detail,” offered Quentin, “I would have just done a portal, or a door or something.”</p><p>“That’s true,” agreed Dwight thoughtfully.</p><p>“If she’s Akkadian, it’s probably because she thinks she’s in Kur,” said Adam a little sadly, “Although. To be fair, I don’t suppose any of us knows where we are at all for certain anymore, and it’s not <em>really</em> a worse guess than any of mine.”</p><p>“Kur?” echoed Nea curiously.</p><p>“Yeah!” said Meg with enthusiasm, “Uh—like hell, but for ancient Mesopotamia. They had a stairway and siiiiix gates?” She checked with Adam.</p><p>“Seven,” said Adam with a smile.</p><p>“Seven—duh—seven’s a holy number in like eight different cultures,” said Meg, “But uh yeah—you go through those to get out.”</p><p><em>Why am I not surprised at <span class="u">all</span> that you know this, </em>thought Quentin with some fairly large amount of affection. Meg knew way too much weird supernatural stuff, but it was pretty cool, and admittedly immensely helpful. Although the reliability was a little hit and miss…</p><p>“Okay, but you don’t actually think we’re <em>in </em>Mesopotamian hell?” said Nea in the <em>haha-of course not </em>voice of someone who was trying to sound like she was casually expecting the answer to be ‘Oh no, definitely not’ but was deeply worried under the surface they had somehow missed many pieces of critical evidence and someone might go ‘Uh, actually yeah.’</p><p>Adam just gave her a <em>‘I mean, I’d say pretty close to for sure not, but the fuck knows for sure anymore’ </em>kind of shrug gesture.</p><p>“Do you really think she can help us, though?” asked Jane thoughtfully, “Well, it can <em>only</em> help I suppose, having a killer trying to assist with an escape plan, but what do you think she can actually <em>do</em>?”</p><p>“I dunno, but apparently use the force or something,” said Quentin quietly on automatic, half to himself.</p><p>“She can <em>what</em>,” said Laurie, who was sitting next to him.</p><p>“Oh—uh—she got mad at one point because she felt bad for us, and just kind of…telekinetic-lookin-style fucked up the whole room?” suggested Dwight tentatively, “Sorry—we skipped over some stuff that didn’t seem relevant to—”</p><p>“—Didn’t seem <em>relevant?” </em>said Meg in disbelief.</p><p>“—Well,” tried Dwight, “To the <em>immediate</em> situation.”</p><p>“—Since when can she do <em>that</em>?” asked Jake like an accusation.</p><p>“Yeah, is she gonna start doin’ that in trials?” asked Kate.</p><p>“I don’t know—we don’t know!” said Dwight desperately, “Look—it’s been a <em>lot </em>today—I know I’d be asking this many questions too if I hadn’t been there today, but I really don’t have all the answers right now.”</p><p>“…So then,” offered Claudette after a moment of silence, “Is the plan we wait to see her in a trial, and then try to talk to her? We could go back over to the Chapel, and wait, but if she told you to run away, that might not be a very good idea…”</p><p>“That’s a good question,” agreed Ace, turning to Dwight for any more specific information he had on the instructions the Plague had given them.</p><p>“Yeah, I guess it’s probably best to,” started Dwight sympathetically, and then his eyes went wide with panic, “OooohhHHH FUCK! Quentin,” he whirled on him desperately, “We didn’t take your note down!”</p><p>“—W?” He got it too. <em>Oh no. </em>“Oh shit!” said Quentin, shooting to his feet, “Fuck-Fuck! I’m such an idiot!”</p><p>“Whoa,” said Jeff calmingly, trying to help.</p><p>“What’s happening?” asked Feng.</p><p>“She was hiding evidence—we left a note and Quentin’s hat up by the Chapel,” said Dwight worriedly, not even noticing Jeff’s bid.</p><p>“—Whoa, calm down,” tried Adam reassuringly, “First of all, I don’t really think the Entity can read. I mean, I suppose it <em>must </em>be able to on some level, but I don’t think it <em>does. </em>It probably doesn’t care. I mean, think about it—how many kind of damningly helpful notes left by other survivors have we <em>found</em>?”</p><p>“He’s got a point,” agreed Jeff encouragingly.</p><p>“…Okay, okay, that’s true,” said Dwight, letting out a breath and relaxing a little, “But still—if it has any reason to get suspicious.”</p><p>“Better to be safe than sorry,” finished Tapp, calm but set, “We should get it down sooner rather than later.”</p><p>“I don’t think there’s a need to panic,” agreed Adam, getting to his feet, “but it <em>is </em>safer to go get it now, just in case. We can figure out the rest after.”</p><p>“Good call,” said Ace, joining him.</p><p>“Yeah,” agreed Dwight gratefully. He’d had a really long day. They’d <em>both </em>had a really long day.</p><p>“I’ll run and get it,” offered Quentin, standing up and trying to ignore the soreness in everything from the day he’d had.</p><p>“I’ll come with you!” said Meg, shooting to her feet with excitement.</p><p>“Why?” said Quentin in surprise.</p><p>“Uhhhh, because last time people went to the Chapel, they had God’s coolest adventure, and it didn’t happen to me and I don’t want a repeat of <em>that </em>again,” said Meg, “And also because last time you went alone, you got your ass handed to you.”</p><p>“Hey!” said Dwight, a little offended, “He wasn’t alone.”</p><p>“I said what I said,” said Meg, giving him an unimpressed up and down once-over.</p><p>“That’s so mean!” said Dwight, betrayed.</p><p>“You know I’m just ribbin’ ya,” said Meg, flashing him a grin, “You’re not actually that bad in a fight anymore.”</p><p>“—Yes! Thank you,” said Dwight, who to his credit had been trying really hard to get better with some help from the survivors who had experience, and had <em>gotten </em>quite a bit better. Quentin felt kind of bad he apparently had been so proud of the recognition of his work he’d totally missed the backhanded half of that compliment.</p><p>“Although I could definitely kick your ass myself any day of the week,” added Meg.</p><p>Dwight sighed, but he didn’t argue. Because it was definitely true.</p><p>“She’s got a point though,” added Kate, standing too, “I think at least like seven of us might as well go—worst a trial can do is take four enroute, and then we still have at least three together in the chapel, which I think we <em>need</em> since buddy system alone didn’t cut it last time.”</p><p>“Finally, someone using critical thinking. God I miss being able to do that. I’ve had some kind of day,” said Dwight apologetically, “Kate’s got a good call. We got three so far—and I’ll go, so that means three more.”</p><p>“No you won’t,” argued Jake, “Your leg’s fucked up.”</p><p>“Oh,” said Dwight, looking down at the bandaged appendage, “Right.”</p><p>“I can go,” offered Claudette, and Meg flashed her a <em>‘Hell yeah!!’ </em>grin and Kate gave her a wink.</p><p>“Me too,” offered Adam, and David gave an, “Aye,” and pushed himself to his feet right on his heels.</p><p>Which left just one, but there was immediately an, “I can go,” from Jeff at the same moment Tapp said, “Why not,” and Ace said, “Guess it’s me,” and Laurie just stood up without saying anything. All four glanced at each other awkwardly.</p><p>“Whatever! We needed at <em>least </em>six—not <em>only</em> six—just—just all of you—somebody go, please,” begged Dwight.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>The walk to the Chapel felt short. Really, it took quite a few minutes usually, and even with everyone jogging to make good time, it was going to be at least a couple. But to Claudette, it felt almost instantaneous.</p><p>She was practically <em>giddy </em>with excitement right now, and it wasn’t a way she was used to feeling at all. But <em>this</em>?? This was HUGE news! A killer had actually decided to help them for once! And even bigger than that, they’d found out the only reason she’d been after them at all was because she thought they had killed a bunch of her friends! What if other killers were like that too? The possibility was thrilling. It was the most hopeful Claudette had felt in, like, <em>ever</em>—she wanted to cry with it. So much of the time, even all the best progress they had felt like so little, but nothing like this had ever happened before! God, she wished she could have been there with Dwight and Quentin to see it happen. <em>I mean—</em>she relented guiltily, glancing up at Quentin and thinking about the nasty bruises on his neck, <em>N-not that it was all fun, but—</em></p><p>Whatever she’d been thinking, she lost the train of thought, because Quentin looked <em>awful. </em>Whatever emotion was on the exact opposite side of the giddy excitement she’d been feeling—she didn’t know—looming heartbreaking dread maybe, <em>that </em>was the emotion on his face.</p><p>“Quentin?” she asked quietly, huffing a little with exertion. Talking was pretty hard to do while jogging, even as used as she’d gotten to running since showing up in the realm, and they were already several minutes into the trek.</p><p>He glanced over at her, and his expression immediately became less awful, and he tried to smile at her and didn’t quite really make it. “Yeah?”</p><p>“What’s wrong?”</p><p>Quentin stared at her like a deer in headlights, and then tried to cover for that and said, “Nothing—sorry—it’s just been a really draining day.”</p><p><em>He’s…lying to me? </em>Usually Quentin didn’t do that, and it kind of hurt her feelings, even though she knew it shouldn’t. She shook her head at him. “No. You look afraid of something happening. What’s wrong?”</p><p>Quentin opened his mouth to answer that, then thought better of it and just jogged beside her for a second, then let out a breath. “I- …It’s nothing. It. I’m just worried for no reason,” he answered quietly while looking guiltily at the tree line ahead.</p><p>“Worried about what?” asked Claudette. He hesitated again, and looked kind of distressed, so feeling guilty now herself, she added, “You don’t have to tell me if you really don’t want to. Just. I want to help.”</p><p>For a second, Quentin glanced over at her in silence, and then he gave her a tired, kind of sad smile, but it was a real one this time. “Thanks. I think I’m just worried something will go wrong.”</p><p>“…With the Plague?” asked Claudette, and he nodded. She was quiet for a long couple of seconds, thinking. Finding old, <em>old </em>memories, and feeling her heart sink too. When she spoke again, she was very quiet. “…Like they went bad with the Wraith?”</p><p>Quentin looked startled, and then sorry as soon as she said it. “I-I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that.”</p><p>“No, it’s okay,” said Claudette, giving him the best smile she could. She could see the Chapel up ahead now. “I know what you mean. It’s been a long time since I thought about that, so I guess I just didn’t think about the Plague like it might be like that on my own. …Do you think it will be…? That she’ll…change her mind?”</p><p>Quentin considered that for a second as they hit churchyard, and then shook his head. “No. I think I’m afraid the Entity might hurt her. Or. Maybe. I-I don’t know.” He glanced at her again and tried to look more assured. “I think I’m just really used to things going wrong for me, so I always kind of assume now they will.”</p><p>“Oh,” said Claudette, a little relieved for some reason. Maybe because she hadn’t realized other people felt that way too much, but then—<em>damn, if I’m relieved because Quentin’s sad too that’s terrible! Stop it! What’s wrong with you; that’s so <span class="u">mean!</span></em> “I-I get like that too sometimes,” she offered, hoping maybe at least it would also make him feel a little better she was like that, and to her relief, it seemed to, and he gave her a smile that was more like his normal one. “But I’m sure it’ll be okay,” she promised as they began to round the chapel, “Things can’t <em>always </em>go wrong, can they?”</p><p>“Hah!” said Quentin, grinning for a second, “Careful what you say.” Smiling, he paused to rap his knuckles against a tree as they went past. “I don’t want to tempt whatever kind of fate that likes to just be an asshole to me all the time might be out there listening.”</p><p>Claudette flushed and grinned back, then turned away to look for the stick and note. The others were pretty close behind them, jogging in little clumps of two, and chatting quietly over each other with their own respective partners, which started with Meg and Kate practically on their heels, and ended with Tapp and Jeff in the back, and she was suddenly just a little bit nervous, so it felt nice to have so much safety in numbers.</p><p>Up ahead, Claudette could finally see the stick holding up the hat and note then—just a few yards out, right by the tree line, and it was still intact—just like she’d left it. She smiled, relieved.</p><p>“….What <em>is </em>that?” said Quentin. He was squinting at the stick and note up ahead too.</p><p>“It…isn’t that how you left it?” asked Claudette, immediately nervous again.</p><p>“No, at the base,” said Quentin, pointing and speeding up a little.</p><p>Struggling to keep up with her friend with much longer legs, it took Claudette a few seconds to see it too, but he was right. There was a strange, squareish, dark-blue shape at the base of the stick.</p><p>“That’s not supposed to be there?” called Meg quietly and with a lot of excitement, speeding up to be jogging beside Quentin. <em>Oh no. I forgot how good her hearing is. She probably heard <span class="u">everything</span>, </em>thought Claudette in dismay, feeling her cheeks get hot again. Well, at—at least she’d been nice about it then. Meg really liked to give people a hard time, though.</p><p>“What is it?” asked Kate, coming up beside Claudette and sounding just as eager as Meg did.</p><p>“I don’t know,” said Quentin, incredibly mystified, and then with a truly indescribable look on his face as they drew a few steps closer, “Oh my <em>God. </em>That’s my jacket.”</p><p>Quentin broke into a full-on run, and Claudette sprinted after him and was vaguely aware of everyone else doing the same, passing muttered confirmation of what they were seeing down to the people at the back. It only took a few seconds to reach the border and the note waiting there, and as she came to a stop breathing hard beside Quentin, she saw that he was right—it <em>was </em>his jacked. Neatly folded, and set at the base of the stick he’d left.</p><p>“She—she must have cleaned it and brought it back for me,” stuttered Quentin in wonder. He knelt and hesitantly went to pick up the jacket, and his expression changed.</p><p>“What?” said Laurie, trying to lean closer in to the semi-circle forming around him and get a good look.</p><p>“There’s something in it,” said Quentin with surprise, and he carefully unfolded the heavy chunk of blue fabric to reveal a clay tablet inside.</p><p>Everyone stared at it. Claudette could have heard a pen drop. Even on the grass carpet.</p><p>“…I thought you said she wanted to help you escape,” said Laurie after a second.</p><p>“…She did,” said Quentin, still stunned. And then slowly, his expression changed, and Claudette saw him finish processing the sight on the tablet, and relief and happiness flicker across his face as the doubt and fear of history waiting to repeat itself faded. He reached out a finger to touch the drawing and ran his fingertip along the rough surface carved there and just kind of stared at it then in wonder.</p><p>Faintly, she registered David letting out a low breath that was almost a whistle at the sight, but Claudette was still lost in the drawing too.</p><p>There was a picture carved neatly on the tablet. It was a drawing of three people. Claudette had never seen a style quite like this before, but with the clothing and the headdress and the glasses and the tree on one of their shirts, those people could <em>only </em>be Quentin, Dwight, and the Plague. And all three of them were holding different weapons, and standing at the edge of a cliff, facing the coiling black waiting mass of darkness and claws that could only ever have been the Entity. And beneath that drawing, very small, she had drawn a skull, and circled it.</p><p>“I guess she changed her mind,” breathed out Jeff after a moment, eyes still fixed on the tablet and a look very much like Quentin’s on his face too.</p><p>“I guess she did,” said Quentin. He finished tracing the little skull and drew back his hand and glanced at it for a second, then slowly closed the fingers not a fist.</p><p>“…Do you think we really can?”</p><p>That had been Meg. Claudette would have expected anybody else in the group to say that except maybe Ace, but it had been Meg, and for the first time Claudette had ever seen when someone had talked about wanting to kill the Entity, she looked a little bit worried and unsure, and Claudette thought probably that was because this time it was for real. She kind of felt that too. The idea had <em>always </em>been a daunting one to her, even though she wanted to do it, but it had also always been thoroughly out of reach, even more than the idea of ever escaping for real was. To <em>actually </em>choose that as a thing to try to do? It kind of made her heart lurch and her stomach queasy, because the Entity was so huge and vast and powerful, and they didn’t even really know what it <em>was. </em>Killing that thing, here, as nothing but normal people? It would be a little bit like trying to kill <em>God</em>. And she was scared of that. She knew how powerful she was, and the answer was ‘<em>not very</em>.’ But still. If there <em>was </em>a way, even a way that was a slim chance. …She <em>wanted </em>to do it. She wanted no one to end up like this ever again. She wanted to believe there was a way to make that happen. And she thought…no, she was starting to be pretty sure, that she wanted it more than she was afraid.</p><p>For a moment, Quentin was silent, looking back at Meg and taking that question seriously, and then he swallowed, and he nodded. “I do. I don’t think it could possibly be easy, but there’s gotta be a way to do just about anything. Even this. And I <em>want </em>to try.”</p><p>He’d said “want” with so much force, and just exactly the way she’d felt it herself maybe a second before, and Claudette was sure then, that she wanted to try too, no matter what the consequences were. She wanted it. She wanted to do something that really mattered for once. She wanted nobody like Meg, or Quentin, or Dwight, or any of the family here she loved to ever get dragged here again. She wanted to stop it.</p><p>Meg let out a long, kind of shaky breath, and then she nodded, and a little of the color came back into her face and she got her normal, cocky little Meg smile back on her lips. “Alright then. Fuck it.”</p><p>“Aye,” agreed David with a tone like he couldn’t have meant it much more too, “Let’s get your Adiris and go kill the bastard.”</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>The prayer Adiris speaks to Ishtar here is part of an actual historical translated Akkadian ritual prayer to the goddess for healing. Speaking of Ishtar, Adiris mentions her quite a few times in this chapter, and she’s important to it and Adiris, so I’m going to follow up on her a little. </p><p>Ancient Mesopotamian mythology is interesting, because it’s so unlike most mythology and religious texts I’ve read. Almost universally, myths and religious parables are either tragedies, or meant to teach a lesson. Ancient Mesopotamian mythology? It’s more like showing up to a holiday dinner to hear all the weird shit your cousins did with no predictable outcomes or meanings behind any of it. Ishtar is particularly interesting to me, because she’s one of the most wildly powerful goddesses in their mythology, and she’s got the personality of a teenage girl. One of her first myths, she is upset because Enki, her father, gave all the gods a bunch of cool 'mes' (more or less domains and abilities), and she feels cheated. Enki tells her to screw off and she's already got a domain, but she doesn’t like this, and comes back that night to challenge him to a drinking competition, drinks him under the table, and then asks him for all the mes when he’s wasted, he gives them to her, and she books home to her own palace. When he wakes up the next morning, he’s super pissed and sends a bunch of monsters after her, but her bodyguard war goddess Ninshubur repeatedly beats them all, and eventually Enki is like ‘Well tbh you tricked me so I guess you won fair and square’ and lets her keep the mes, which is why Ishtar is God of like 17 things, ranging from sex to war to political power to storms. A lot of her myths are exactly like this. Ishtar wants something. Someone says ‘Don’t do it, you’ll get your ass kicked,’ she does it anyway because she has the soul of an incorrigible 17 year old girl, and then somehow she wins. Except for that time she went to Kur and her sister killed her for no reason, although she did make it out of that eventually—just not on her own. And later she beat the shit out of Kur even though all the Gods told her not to because they were afraid of it and the demons who live there. Kind of an icon, really. In their flood myth, Ishtar shows up to the two human survivors, goes ‘I am so sorry. He didn’t tell /any/ of us he was going to flood the earth and kill all my fucking humans. I swear I won’t let this ever happen again.’ and then throws a party and invites every god /except/ Enlil, who started the flood, to attend. She was also the Mesopotamian goddess whose temple was wildly known for welcoming trans worshipers, gay worshipers, and kind of just any people who went against the gender binary.</p><p>Heightwise, there's some evidence that forever ago some groups of humans were taller than modernday average, but for a lot of history people averaged shorter, &amp; Ancient Sumeria is a broad term lasting a long span of time. (Fun fact: While only part human, Gilgamesh's version of 'unusually tall' is listed as a whopping 16-18ft/503-550cm) So given that Adiris is canonically over 7 feet tall in-game, and not remarkably taller than the people she grew up around, this leaves two possibilities. Girl either lived in a /very/ tall culture by chance, or the Entity fucked with her height, her people's height, and all their stuff too so she wouldn't notice a perspective change. Not even sure which I like better. As unlikely as it'd be, maaybe a genuine 7+ ft bc while barely plausible, we'd all be so damn hilarious to her. I find both v fun.<br/>While Adiris has no powers in-game like she does in this chapter, since the canonical makeup of the realm is based on emotion and belief, and people can and have manifested phenomena and physical objects through sheer force of emotion, intent, and belief, it follows logically that if she truly believes it will work, it will. Which, given Adiris’ kind of personality, would be incredibly terrifying in sheer potential if she wasn’t on our side. Doubly true after having seen her out method-act the Entity. Truly terrifying. I love her, but she is very intimidating, which I appreciate about her. Probably Ishtar truly would take one look at that kind of moxie and go "No choice but to stan."</p><p> </p><p>Well here it is! Thank you so much for reading. This was a journey and a ton of work, but really great to work on. In the back of my heart, I want to someday turn a couple of the shorter fics I write or am working on into much longer almost AUs for ILM with different core themes, and this would definitely be one of them if I ever did, and, quite fittingly, would be the one that was Man vs God. Adiris has a wild kind of spark to her, and I'm very proud of how much she's been able to recover through and do even in just a six or so hour span of time, and I look forward a lot to writing her again. Thank you again so much for reading, and Viet, hope you enjoyed it especially. &lt;3</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
</body>
</html>